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WHEN A MAN MARRIES 





























WHEN A MAN 
MARRIES 


By 
MARY ROBERTS RINEHART 


' Author of 
THE CIRCULAR STAIRCASE 
THE MAN IN LOWER TEN, ETC. 


Rie 


WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY 


HARRISON FISHER 
AND 


MAYO BUNKER 


NEW YORK 


GROSSET ©& DUNLAP 
PUBLISHERS 








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Needles and pins, 
Needles and pins, 

When a man marries 
His trouble begins. 








CONTENTS 


At Least I Meanr WELL 
Tue Way IT Brean 

I Mieut Have Known Ir 
Tue Door Was CLosep 
From tue Trex or Love 
A Miaeuty Poor Joke 
We Make Aan OMELET 
CoRRESPONDENTS’ DEPARTMENT 
FLANNIGAN’s FIND 

ON THE STAIRS 

I Make a Discovery 

Tue Roor GARDEN 

He Doss Not Deny ir 
Atmost, But Not Quire 
Suspicion AND DiscorpD 

I Face FLANNIGAN 

A CiasH AND A Kiss 

Ir’s Att My Favutr 

Tue Harsison Man 
BreakineG Out In A New Piace 
A Bar oF Soap 

Ir was De.inium 

CoMING 


\ 














WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


» 


“s 





WHEN A MAN MARRIES 










CHAPTER I 


Wey AT LEAST I MEANT WELL 


\ WHEN the dreadful thing occurred 
SWil\that night, every one turned on me. 

ye The injustice of it hurt me most. 
| They said J got up the dinner, that I 
asked them to give up other engagements 
and come, that J promised all kinds of jollification, if 
they would come; and then when they did come and 
got in the papers, and every one—but ourselves— 
laughed himself black in the face, they turned on me! 
I, who suffered ten times to their one! I shall never 
forget what Dallas Brown said to me, standing with 
a coal shovel in one hand and a—well, perhaps it 
would be better to tell it all in the order it happened. 

It began with Jimmy Wilson and a conspiracy, 
I 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


was helped on by a foot-square piece of yellow paper 
and a Japanese butler, and it enmeshed and mixed 
up generally ten respectable members of society and 
a policeman. Incidentally, it involved a pearl collar 
and a box of soap, which sounds incongruous, 
doesn’t it? 

It is a great misfortune to be stout, especially for 
aman. Jim was rotund and looked shorter than he 
really was, and as all the lines of his face, or what 
should have been lines, were really dimples, his face 
was about as flexible and full of expression as a 
pillow in a tight cover. The angrier he got the fun- 
nier he looked, and when he was raging, and his | 
neck swelled up over his collar and got:red, he was 
entrancing. And everybody liked him, and bor- 
rowed money from him, and laughed at his pictures 
_ (he has one in the Hargrave gallery in London now, 
so people buy them instead), and smoked his ciga- 
rettes, and tried to steal his Jap. The whole story 
hinges on the Jap. 

The trouble was, I think, that no one took Jim 
seriously. His ambition in life was to be taken 


a 





THE WHOLE STORY HINGES ON THE JAP 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


seriously, but people steadily refused to. His art 
was a huge joke—except to himself. If he asked 
people to dinner, every one expected a frolic. When 
he married Bella Knowles, people chuckled at the 
wedding, and considered it the wildest prank of 
Jimmy’s career, although Jim himself seemed to 
take it awfully hard. 

We had all known them both for years. I went to 
Farmington with Bella, and Anne Brown was her 
matron of honor when she married Jim. My first 
winter out, Jimmy had paid me a lot of attention. 
He painted my portrait in oils and had a studio tea 
to exhibit it. It was a very nice picture, but it did 
not look like me, so I stayed away from the exhibi- 
tion. Jim asked me to. He said he was not a pho- 
tographer, and that anyhow the rest of my features 
called for the nose he had given me, and that all the 
Greuze women have long necks. I have not. 

After I had refused Jim twice he met Bella at a 
camp in the Adirondacks and when he came back he 
came at once to see me. He seemed to think I 


would be sorry to lose him, and he blundered over 
: 


’ 


Fadl 


AT LEAST I MEANT WELL 


the telling for twenty minutes. Of course, no 
woman likes to lose a lover, no matter what she 
may say about it, but Jim had been getting on my 
nerves for some time, and I was much calmer than 
he expected me to be. 

“Tf you mean,” I said finally in desperation, “‘that 
you and Bella are—are in love, why don’t you say 
so, Jim? I think you will find that I stand it won- 
derfully.”’ 

He brightened perceptibly. 

“T didn’t know how you would take it, Kit,” he 
said, “and I hope we will always be bully friends. 
You are absolutely sure you don’t care a whoop for 
me?” 

“Absolutely,” I replied, and we shook hands on it. 
Then he began about Belia; it was very tiresome. 

Bella is a nice girl, but I had roomed with her at 
school, and I was under no illusions. When Jim 
raved about Bella and her banjo, and Bella and her 
guitar, I had painful moments when I recalled Bella 
learning her two songs on each instrument, and the 
old English ballad she had learned to play on the 


. 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


harp. When he said she was too good for him, I 
never batted an eye. And I shook hands solemnly 
across the tea-table again, and wished him happiness 
—which was sincere enough, but hopeless—and said 
we had only been playing a game, but that it was 
time to stop playing. Jim kissed my hand, and it 
was really very touching. 

We had been the best of friends ever since. Two 
days before the wedding he came around from his — 
tailor’s, and we burned all his letters to me. He 
would read one and say: “Here’s a crackerjack, 
Kit,” and pass it to me. And after I had read it we 
would lay it on the firelog, and Jim would say, 
“T am not worthy of her, Kit. I wonder if I can 
make her happy?” Or—“Did you know that the 
Duke of Belford proposed to her in London last 
winter ?” 

Of course, one has to take the woman’s word 
about a thing like that, but the Duke of Belford had 
been mad about Maude Richard all that winter. 

You can see that the burning of the letters, which 
was meant to be reminiscently sentimental, a sort 


6 


AL LHAST.I MEANT WELL 


of how-silly-we-were-but-it-is-all-over-now occasion, 
became actually a two hours’ eulogy of Bella. And 
just when I was bored to death, the Mercer girls 
dropped in and heard Jim begin to read one com- 
mencing: “dearest Kit.” And the next day after the 
rehearsal dinner, they told Bella! 

There was very nearly no wedding at all. Bella 
came to see me in a frenzy the next morning and 
threw Jim and his two hundred odd pounds in my 
face, and although I explained it all over and over, 
she never quite forgave me. That was what made 
it so hard later—the situation would have been bad 
enough without that complication. 

They went abroad on their wedding journey, and 
stayed several months. And when Jim came back 
he was fatter than ever. Everybody noticed it. 
Bella had a gymnasium fitted up in a corner of the 
studio, but he would not use it. He smoked a pipe 
and painted all day, and drank beer and would eat 
starches or whatever it is that is fattening. But he 
adored Bella, and he was madly jealous of her. At 


dinners he used to glare at the man who took her in, 


7 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


although it did not make him thin. Bella was flirt- 
ing, too, and by the time they had been married a 
year, people hitched their chairs together and 
dropped their voices when they were mentioned. 
Well, on the anniversary of the day Bella left him 
—oh, yes, she left him finally. She was intense 
enough about some things, and she said it got on her 
nerves to have everybody chuckle when they asked 
for her husband. They would say, “Hello, Bella! 
How’s Bubbles? Still banting?’ And Bella would 
try to laugh and say, “He swears his tailor says his 
waist is smaller, but if it is he must be growing 
hollow in the back.” But she got tired of it at last. 
Well, on the second anniversary of Bella’s depart- 
ure, Jimmy was feeling pretty glum, and as I say, 
I am very fond of Jim. The divorce had just gone 
through and Bella had taken her maiden name again 
and had had an operation for appendicitis. We heard 
afterward that they didn’t find an appendix, and 
that the one they showed her ina glass jar was not 
hers! But if Bella ever suspected, she didn’t say. 
Whether the appendix was anonymous or not, she 
8 





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SHE GOT BOX AFTER BOX OF FLOWERS 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


got box after box of flowers that were, and of 
course every one knew that it was Jim who sent 
them. 

To go back to the anniversary; I went to Roth- 
_ berg’s to see the collection of antique furniture— 
mother was looking for a sideboard for father’s 
birthday in March—and I met Jimmy there, boring 
into a worm-hole in a seventeenth-century bedpost 
with the end of a match, and looking his nearest to 
sad. When he saw me he came over. 

“I’m blue to-day, Kit,’ he said, after we had 
shaken hands. “Come and help me dig bait, and 
then let’s go fishing. If there’s a worm in every 
hole in that bedpost, we could go into the fish busi- 
ness. It’s a good business.” 

“Better than painting?’ I asked. But he anes 

my gibe and swelled up alarmingly in order to sigh. 

“This is the worst day of the year for me,” he 
affirmed, staring straight ahead, “and the longest. 
Look at that crazy clock over there. If you want to 
see your life passing away, if you want to see the 
steps by which you are marching to eternity, watch 


IO 


mieeieAst I MEANT WELL 


that clock marking the time. Look at that infernal 
hand staying quiet for sixty seconds and then jump- 
ing forward to catch up with the procession. Ugh!” 

“See here, Jim,” I said, leaning forward, ‘“‘you’re 
not well. You can’t go through the rest of the day 
like this. I know what you'll do: you'll go home to 
play Grieg on the pianola, and you won’t eat any 
dinner.” He looked guilty. 

“Not Grieg,’ he protested feebly. “Beethoven.” 

“You're not going to do either,’’I said with firm- 
ness. “You are going right home to unpack those 
new draperies that Harry Bayles sent you from 
Shanghai, and you are going to order dinner for 
eight—that will be two tables of bridge. And you 
are not going to touch the pianola.” 

He did not seem enthusiastic, but he rose and 
picked up his hat, and stood looking down at me 
where I sat on an old horse-hair covered sofa. 

“TI wish to thunder I had married you!’ he said 
savagely. “You're the finest girl I know, Kit, with- 
out exception, and you are going to throw yourself 
away on Jack Manning, or Max, or some other—” 


II 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


“Nothing of the sort,” I said coldly, “and the fact 
that you didn’t marry me does not give you the privi- 
lege of abusing my friends. Anyhow, I don’t like 
you when you speak like that.” 

Jim took me to the door and stopped there to sigh. 

“T haven’t been well,’ he said heavily. “Don’t 
eat, don’t sleep. Wouldn’t you think I’d lose flesh? 
Kit”—he lowered his voice solemnly—*“I have 
gained two pounds!” 

I said he didn’t look it, which appeared to com- 
fort him somewhat, and, because we were old 
friends, I asked him where Bella was. He said he 
thought she was in Europe, and that he had heard 
she was going to marry Reggie Wolfe. Then he 
sighed again, muttered something about ordering 
the funeral baked meats to be prepared and left me. 

That was my entire share in the affair. I was the 
victim, both of circumstances and of their plot, 
which was mad on the face of it. During the en- 
tire time they never once let me forget that J got 
up the dinner, that J telephoned around for them. 
_ They asked me why I couldn’t cook—when not one 
12 


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BORING INTO A WORM-HOLE IN A SEVENTEENTH-~ 
CENTURY BEOPOST 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


of them knew one side of a range from the other. 
And for Anne Brown to talk the way she did—say- 
ing I had always been crazy about Jim, and that 
she believed I had known all along that his aunt was 

coming—for Anne to talk like that was sheer idiocy. 
Yes, there was an aunt. The Japanese butler started 


the trouble, and Aunt Selina carried it along. 


14 


SE APT ER TL 


THE WAY IT BEGAN 


think how I tried to make that din- 


ner a success. I canceled a theater en- 









nil, oe “ee IT makes me angry every time I 


i gagement, and I took the Mercer girls in 
}, the electric brougham father had given me 
for Christmas. Their chauffeur had been 
(| gone for hours with their machine, and they 
yi’ had telephoned all the police stations without 
success. They were afraid that there had been an 
awful smash ; they could easily have replaced Bart- 
lett, as Lollie said, but it takes so long to get new 
parts for those foreign cars. 

Jim had a house well up-town, and it stood just 
enough apart from the other houses to be entirely 
maddening later, It was a three-story affair, with 
a basement kitchen and servants’ dining-room. 


Then, of course, there were cellars, as we found out 


T5 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


afterward. On the first floor there was a large 
square hall, a formal reception-room, behind it a big 
living-room that was also a library, then a den, and 
back of all a Georgian dining-room, with windows 
high above the ground. On the top floor Jim had a 
studio, like every other one I ever saw—perhaps a 
little mussier. Jim was really a grind at his paint- 
ing, and there were cigarette ashes and palette 
knives and buffalo rugs and shields everywhere. It 
is strange, but when IJ think of that terrible house, 
I always see the halls, enormous, covered with 
heavy rugs, and stairs that would have taken six 
housemaids to keep in proper condition. I dream 
about those stairs, stretching above me in a Jacob’s 
ladder of shining wood and Persian carpets, going 
up, up, clear to the roof. 

The Dallas Browns walked; they lived in the 
next block. And they brought with them a man 
named Harbison, that no one knew. Anne said he 
would be great sport, because he was terribly seri- 
ous, and had the most exaggerated ideas of society, 
and loathed extravagance, and built bridges or 

16 





‘S3IEY BROUGHT WITH THEM A MAN 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


something. She had put away her cigarettes since 
he had been with them—he and Dallas had been col- 
lege friends—and the only chance she had to smoke 
was when she was getting her hair done. And she 
had singed off quite a lot—a burnt offering, she 
called it. 

“My dear,’ she said over the telephone, when I 
invited her, “I want you to know him. He'll be 
crazy about you. That type of man, big and deadly 
earnest, always falls in love with your type of girl, 
the appealing sort, you know. And he has been too 
busy, up to now, to know what love is. But mind, 
don’t hurt him: he’s a dear boy. I’m half in love 
with him myself, and Dallas trots around at his 
heels like a poodle.” 

But all Anne’s geese are swans, so I thought little 
of the Harbison man except to hope that he played 
respectable bridge, and wouldn’t mark the cards 
with a steel spring under his finger nail, as one of 
her “finds” had done. 

We all arrived about the same time, and Anne 
and I went up-stairs together to take off our wraps 
18 


Botte VAY [TT BEGAN 


in what had been Bella’s dressing-room. It was 
Anne who noticed the violets. 

“Look at that!” she nudged me, when the maid 
was examining her wrap before she laid it down. 
“What did I tell you, Kit? He’s still quite mad 
about her.” 

Jim had painted Bella’s portrait while they were 
going up the Nile on their wedding-trip. It looked 
quite like her, if you stood well off in the middle of 
the room and if the light came from the right. And 
just beneath it, in a silver vase, was a bunch of vio- 
lets. It was really touching, and violets were fabu- 
lous. It made me want to cry, and to shake Bella 
soundly, and to go down and pat Jim on his gener- 
ous shoulder, and tell him what a good fellow I 
thought him, and that Bella wasn’t worth the dust 
under his feet. I don’t know much about psychol- 
ogy, but it would be interesting to know just what 
effect those violets and my sympathy for Jim had in 
influencing my decision a half-hour later. It is not 
surprising, under the circumstances, that for some 


time after the odor of violets made me ill. 


19 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


We all met down-stairs in the living-room, quite 
informally, and Dallas was banging away at the 
pianola, tramping the pedals with the delicacy and 
feeling of a foot-ball center-rush kicking a goal. 
Mr. Harbison was standing near the fire, a little 
away from the others, and he was all that Anne had 
said and more in appearance. He was tall—not 
too tall, and very straight. And after one got past 
the oddity of his face being bronze-colored above his 
white collar, and of his brown hair being sun- 
bleached on top until it was almost yellow, one real- 
ized that he was very handsome. He had what one 
might call a resolute nose and chin, and a pleasant, 
rather humorous, mouth. And he had blue eyes that 
were, at that moment, wandering with interest over 
the lot of us. Somebody shouted his name to me 
above the Tristan and Isolde music, and I held out 
my hand. 

Instantly I had the feeling one sometimes has, of 
having done just that same thing, with the same 
surroundings, in the same place, years before. I was 
looking up at him, and he was staring down at me 


20 








THE ONLY CHANCE SHE HAD TO SMOKE 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


and holding my hand. And then the music stopped 
and he was saying: 

“Where was it?” 

“Where was what?’ I asked. The feeling was 
stronger than ever with his voice. 

“I beg your pardon,” he said, and let my hand 
drop. “Just for a second I had an idea that we had 
met before somewhere, a long time ago. I suppose 
—no, it couldn’t have happened, or I should remem- 
ber.” He was smiling, half at himself. 

“No,” I smiled back at him. “It didn’t happen, 
I’m afraid—unless we dreamed it.” 

aa ae | 

“T felt that way, too, for a moment.” 

“The Brushwood Boy!” he said with conviction. 
“Perhaps we will find a common dream life, where 
we knew each other. You remember the Brush- 
wood Boy loved the girl for years before they really 


39 


met.” But this was a little too rapid, even for me. 

“Nothing so sentimental, I’m afraid,” I retorted. 
“T have had exactly the same sensation sometimes 
when I have sneezed.” 


22 


THE WAY IT BEGAN 


Betty Mercer captured him then and took him off 
to see Jim’s newest picture. Anne pounced on me 
at once. 

“Isn't he delicious?’ she demanded. “Did you 
ever see such shoulders? And such a nose? And 
he thinks we are parasites, cumberers of the earth, 
Heaven knows what. He says every woman ought 
to know how to earn her living, in case of necessity! 
I said I could make enough at bridge, and he 
thought I was joking! He’sa dear!’ Anne was en- — 
thusiastic. 

I looked after him. Oddly enough the feeling 
that we had met before stuck to.me. Which was 
ridiculous, of course, for we learned afterward that 
the nearest we ever came to meeting was that our 
mothers had been school friends! Just then I saw 
Jim beckoning to me crazily from the den. He 
looked quite: yellow, and he had been running his 
fingers through his hair. | | 

“For Heaven’s sake, come in, Kit!” he said. ‘“‘I 
need a cool head. Didn’t J tell you this is my calam- 
ity day?” . 

23 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


“Cook gone?” I asked with interest. I was starv- 
ing. 

He closed the door and took up a tragic attitude 
in front of the fire. “Did you ever hear of Aunt 
Selina?’ he demanded. 

“T knew there was one,’ I ventured, mindful of 
certain gossip as to whence Jimmy derived the Wil- 
son income. 

Jim himself was too worried to be cautious. He 
waved a brazen hand at the snug room, at the Jap- 
anese prints on the walls, at the rugs, at the teak- 
wood cabinets and the screen inlaid with pearl and 
ivory. 

“All this,” he said comprehensively, “every bite 
I eat, clothes I wear, drinks I drink—you needn’t 
look like that ; I don’t drink so darned much—every- 
thing comes from Aunt Selina—buttons,” he fin- 
ished with a groan. } 

“Selina Buttons,” I said reflectively. “I don’t re- 
member ever having known any one named Buttons, 
although I had a cat once—” 

“Damn the cat!’ he said rudely. “Her name isn’t 


24 


foro AY LT BEGAN 


Buttons. Her name is Caruthers, my Aunt Selina 
Caruthers, and the money comes from buttons.” 

“Oh!” feebly. 

“It’s an old business,” he went on, with some- 
thing of proprietary pride. “My grandfather 
founded it in 1775. Made buttons for the Conti- 
nental Army.” 

“Oh, yes,” I said. “They melted the buttons to 
make bullets, didn’t they? Or they melted bullets 
to make buttons? Which was it?” 

But again he interrupted. 

“Tt’s like this,’ he went on hurriedly. “Aunt 
Selina believes in me. She likes pictures, and she 
wanted me to paint, if I could. I’d have given up 
long ago—oh, I know what you think of my work— 
but for Aunt Selina. She has encouraged me, and 
she’s done more than that; she’s paid the bills.” 

“Dear Aunt Selina,” I breathed. 

“When I got married,” Jim persisted, “Aunt Se- 
lina doubled my allowance. I always expected to 
sell something, and begin to make money, and in 


the meantime what she advanced I considered as a 


25 





“ EVERYTHING COMES FROM AUNT SELINA” 


fo WAY Tl BEGAN 


loan.” He was eying me defiantly, but I was grow- 
ing serious. It was evident from the preamble that 
something was coming. 

“To understand, Kit,’ he went on dubiously, “you 
would have to know her. She won’t stand for 
divorce. She thinks it is a crime.” 

“What!” Isat up. I have always regarded di- 
vorce as essentially disagreeable, like castor oil, but 
necessary. 

“Oh, you know well enough what I’m driving 


33 


at,’ he burst out savagely. “She doesn’t know 
Bella has gone. She thinks I am living in a little 
domestic heaven, and—she is coming to-night to 
hear me flap my wings.” 

“To-night!’’ 

I don’t think Jimmy had known that Dallas 
Brown had come in and was listening. I am sure 
I had not. Hearing his chuckle at the doorway 
brought us up with a jerk. 

“Where has Aunt Selina been for the last two or 
three years?” he asked easily. 

Jim turned, and his face brightened. 


27 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


“Europe. Look here, Dal, you’re a smart chap. 
She’ll only be here about four hours. Can’t you 
think of some way to get me out of this? I want 
to let her down easy, too. I’m mighty fond of 
Aunt Selina. Can’t we—can’t I say Bella has a 
headache ?” 

“Rotten!” laconically. 

“Gone out of town?” Jim was desperate. 

“And you with a houseful of dinner guests! Try 
again, Jim.” 

“T have it,’ Jim said suddenly. “Dallas, ask 
Anne if she won’t play hostess for to-night. Be 
Mrs. Wilson pro tem. Anne would love it. Aunt 
Selina never saw Bella. Then, afterward, next 
year, when I’m hung in the Academy and can stand 
on my feet”—(“Not if you’re hung,” Dallas inter- 
jected. )—“T’'ll break the truth to her.” 

But Dallas was not enthusiastic. 

“Anne wouldn’t do at all,” he declared. “She’d 
be talking about the kids before she knew it, and 
patting me on the head.” He said it complacently ; 
Anne flirts, but they are really devoted. 

28 


pee WAY IT. BEGAN 


“One of the Mercer girls?” I suggested, but 
Jimmy raised a horrified hand. ; 

“You don’t know Aunt Selina,’ he protested. “I 
couldn’t offer Leila in the gown she’s got on, unless 
she wore a shawl, and Betty is too fair.” 

Anne came in just then, and the whole story had 
to be told again to her. She was ecstatic. She said 
it was good enough for a play, and that of course she 
would be Mrs. Jimmy for that length of time. 

“You know,” she finished, “if it were not for Dal, 
I would be Mrs. Jimmy for any length of time. 
I have been devoted to you for years, Billiken.” 

But Dallas refused peremptorily. 

“T’m not jealous,” he explained, straightening and 
throwing out his chest, “but—well, you don’t look 
the part, Anne. You’re—you are growing ma- 
tronly, not but what you suit me all right. And 
then I’d forget and call you ‘mammy,’ which would 
require explanation. I think it’s up to you, Kit.’. 

“T shall do nothing of the sort!’ I snapped. “It’s 
ridiculous!” 


“T dare you!” said Dallas. 
29 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


I refused. I stood like a rock while the storm 
surged around me and beat over me. I must say for 
Jim that he was merely pathetic. He said that my 
happiness was first; that he would not give me an 
uncomfortable minute for anything on earth; and 
that Bella had been perfectly right to leave him, 
because he was a sinking ship, and deserved to be 
turned out penniless into the world. After which 
mixed figure, he poured himself something to drink, 
and his hands were shaking. __ 

Dal and Anne stood on each side of him and 
patted him on the shoulders, and glared across at me. 
I felt that if I was a rock, Jim’s ship had struck on 
me and was sinking, as he said, because of me. I 
began to crumble. 

““What—what time does she leave?” I asked, wav- 
ering. 

“Ten: nine; Kit, are you going to do it?” 

“No!” I-gave a last clutch at my resolution. 
“People who do that kind of thing always get into 
trouble. She might miss her train. She’s almost 


certain to miss her train.” 


, 30 


THE WAY IT BEGAN 


“You're temporizing,” Dallas said sternly. “We 
won't let her miss her train; you can be sure of 
that.” 

“Jim,’’ Anne broke in suddenly, “‘hasn’t she a pic- 
ture of Bella? There’s not the faintest. resemblance 
between Bella and Kit.” 

Jim became downcast again. “TI sent her a minia- 
ture of Bella a couple of years ago,” he said de- 
spondently. “Did it myself.’ | 

But Dal said he remembered the miniature, and it - 
looked more like me than Bella, anyhow. So we 
were just where we started. And down inside of me 
I had a premonition that I was going to do just what 
they wanted me to do, and get into all sorts of trou- 
ble, and not be thanked for it after all. Which was 
entirely correct. And then Leila Mercer came and 
banged at the door and said that dinner had been an- 
nounced ages ago and that everybody was famish- 
ing. With the hurry and stress, and poor Jim’s dis- 
tracted face, I weakened. 

“T feel like a cross between an idiot and.a crimi- 
nal,” I said shortly, “and I don’t know particularly 


31 y 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


why every one thinks I should be the victim for the 
sacrifice. But if you will promise to get her off 
early to her train, and if you will stand by me and 
not leave me alone with her, I—I might try it.” 

“Of course, we'll stand by you!” they said in 
chorus. “We won't let you stick!” And Dal 
said, ““You’re the right sort of girl, Kit. And after 
it’s all over, you'll realize that it’s the biggest kind 
of lark. Think how you are saving the old lady’s 
feelings! When you are an elderly person your- 
self, Kit, you will appreciate what you are doing 
to-night.” 

Yes, they said they would stand by me, and that 
I was a heroine and the only person there clever 
enough to act the part, and that they wouldn’t let me 
stick! I am not bitter now, but that is what they 
promised. Oh, I am not defending myself; I sup- 
pose I deserved everything that happened. But 
they told me that she would be there only between’ 
trains, and that she was deaf, and that I had an op- 


portunity to save a fellow-being from ruin. Soin. 


the end I capitulated. 
32 


THE WAY IT BEGAN 


When they opened the door into the living-room, 
Max Reed had arrived and was helping to hide a 
decanter and glasses, and somebody said a cab was 
at the door. 

And that was the way it began. 


33 


CHAPTER wit 


I MIGHT HAVE KNOWN IT 






THE minute I had consented I re- 
\\ gretted it. After all, what were 
Jimmy’s troubles to me? Why 


\\ \\\ 


should I help him impose on an 
unsuspecting elderly woman? 
And it was only putting off dis- 
covery anyhow. Sooner or later, 
ee ‘would learn of the divorce, and— Just 
at that instant my eyes fell on Mr. Harbison—Tom 
Harbison, as Anne called him, He was looking on 
with an amused, half-puzzled smile, while people 
were rushing around hiding the roulette wheel and 
things of which Miss Caruthers might disapprove, 
and Betty Mercer was on her knees winding up a toy ~ 
bear that Max had brought her. What would he 
think? It was evident that he thought badly of us » 
already—that he was contemptuously amused, and 


34 





RUSHING AROUND HIDING THE ROULETTE WHEEL AND THINGS 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


then to have to ask him to lend himself to the de- 
ception ! 

With a gasp I hurled myself after Jimmy, only to 
hear a strange voice in the hall and to know that I 
_-was too late. I was in for it, whatever was coming. 

It was Aunt Selina who was coming—along the 
hall, followed by Jim, who was mopping his face and 
trying not to notice the paralyzed silence in the 
library. 

Aunt Selina met me in the doorway. To my 
frantic eyes she seemed to tower above us by at least 
a foot, and beside her Jimmy was a red, perspiring 
cherub. 

“Here she is,’ Jimmy said, from behind a tem- 
porary eclipse of black cloak and traveling bag. He 
was on top of the situation now, and he was menda- 
ciously cheerful. He had mot said, “Here is my 
wife.” That would have been a lie. No, Jimmy 
‘merely said, “Here she is.” If Aunt Selina chose to 
think me Bella, was it not her responsibility? And 
if I chose to accept the situation, was it not mine? 
Dallas Brown came forward gravely as Aunt Selina 

36 


I MIGHT HAVE KNOWN IT 


folded over and kissed me, and surreptitiously pat- 
ted me with one hand while he held out the other to 
Miss Caruthers. I loathed him! 

“We always expect something unusual from 
James, Miss Caruthers,” he said, with his best man- 
ner, “but this—this is beyond our wildest dreams.” 

Well, it’s too awful to linger over. Anne took 
her up-stairs and into Bella’s bedroom. It was a 
fancy of Jim’s to leave that room just as Bella had 
left it, dusty dance cards and favors hanging around 
and a pair of discarded slippers under the bed. I 
don’t think it had been swept since Bella left it. I 
believe in sentiment, but I like it brushed and dusted 
and the cobwebs off of it, and when Aunt Selina put 
down her bonnet, it stirred up a gray-white cloud 
that made her cough. She did not say anything, but 
she looked around the room grimly, and I saw her 
run her finger over the back of a chair before she let 
Hannah, the maid, put her cloak on it. 

Anne looked frightened. She ran into Bella’s bath 
and wet the end of a towel and when Hannah was 


changing Aunt Selina’s collar—her concession to 


37 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


evening dress—Anne wiped off the obvious places 
on the furniture. She did it stealthily, but Aunt 
Selina saw her in the glass. 

“What’s that young woman’s name?” she asked 
me sharply, when Anne had taken the towel out to 
hide it. 

“Anne Brown, Mrs. Dallas Brown,” I replied 
meekly. Every one replied meekly to Aunt Selina. 

“Does she live here?” 

“Oh, no,’ I said airily. “They are here to ain- 
ner, she and her husband. They are old friends of 
_ Jim’s—and mine.” 

“Seems to have a good eye for dirt,” said Aunt 
Selina and went on fastening her brooch. When she 
was finally ready, she took a bead purse from some- 
where about her waist and took out a half dollar. 
She held it up before Hannah’s eyes. 

“To-morrow morning,” she said sternly, “‘you 
take off that white cap and that fol-de-rol apron and 
that black henrietta cloth, and put on a calico wrap- 
per. And when you’ve got this room aired and 
swept, Mrs. Wilson will give you this,” 


38 





AM 


Weer rc iN \ 


iy 


‘HERE SHE Is,’ JIMMY SAID 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


Hannah took two steps back and caught hold of a 
chair; she stared helplessly from Aunt Selina to the 
half dollar, and then at me. Anne was trying not to 
‘catch my eye. 

“And another thing,’ Aunt Selina said, from the 
head of the stairs, “I sent those towels over from 
Ireland. Tell her to wash and bleach the one Mrs. 
What’s-her-name Brown used as a duster.”’ 

Anne was quite crushed as we went down the 
stairs. I turned once, half-way down, and her face 
was a curious mixture of guilt and hopeless wrath. 
Over her shoulder, I could see Hannah, wide-eyed 
and puzzled, staring after us. 

Jim presented everybody, and then he went into 
the den and closed the door and we heard him unlock 
the cellarette. Aunt Selina looked at Leila’s bare 
shoulders and said she guessed she didn’t take cold 
easily, and conversation rather languished. Max 
Reed was looking like a thundercloud, and he came 
over to me with a lowering expression that I had 
learned to dread in him. 


“What fool nonsense is this?’ he demanrled. 


40 


I MIGHT HAVE KNOWN IT 


‘What in the world possessed you, Kit, to put your- 
self in such an equivocal position? Unless’’—he 
stopped and turned a little white—“unless you are 
going to marry Jim.” 

I am sorry for Max. He is such a nice boy, and 
good looking, too, if only he were not so fierce, and 
did not want to make love to me. No matter what 
I do, Max always disapproves of it. I have always 
had a deeply rooted conviction that if I should ever 
in a weak moment marry Max, he would disapprove 
of that, too, before I had done it very long. 

“Are you?” he demanded, narrowing his eyes— 
a sign of unusually bad humor. 

“Am I what?” 

“Going to marry him?” 

“Tf you mean Jim,” I said with dignity, “I haven’t 
made up my mind yet. Besides, he hasn’t asked 
me.” 

Aunt Selina had been talking Woman’s Suffrage 
in front of the fireplace, but now she turned to me. 

“Ts this the vase Cousin Jane Whitcomb sent you 


as a wedding-present ?” she demanded, indicating a 


AI 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


hideous urn-shaped affair on the mantel. It came to 
me as an inspiration that Jim had once said it was an 
ancestral urn, so I said without hesitation that it 
was. And because there was a pause and every one 
_was looking at us, I added that it was a beautiful 
thing. | 

Aunt Selina sniffed. 

“Hideous!” she said. “It looks like Cousin Jane, 
shape and coloring.” 

Then she looked at it more closely, pounced on it, 
turned it upside down and shook it. A card fell out, 
which Dallas picked up and gave her with a bow. 
Jim had come out of the den and was dancing wildly 
around and beckoning to me. By the time I had 
made out that that was not the vase Cousin Jane had 
' sent us as a wedding-present, Aunt Selina had exam- 
ined the card. Then she glared across at me and, 
stooping, put the card in the fire. I did not under- 
stand at all, but I knew I had in some way done the 
unforgivable thing. Later, Dal told me it was her 
card, and that she had sent the vase to Jim at Christ- 


mas, with a generous check inside. When she 


42 


I MIGHT HAVE KNOWN IT 


straightened from the fireplace, it was to a new 
theme, which she attacked with her usual vigor. The 
vase incident was over, but she never forgot it. She 
proved that she never did when she sent me two 
urn-shaped vases with Paul and Virginia on them, 
when I—that is, later on. 

“The Cause in England has made great strides,” 
she announced from the fireplace. “Soon the hand 
that rocks the cradle will be the hand that actually 
rules the world.” Here she looked at me. 

“Dm not up on such things,” Max said blandly, 
having recovered some of his good humor, “but— 
isn’t it usually a foot that rocks the cradle?” 

Aunt Selina turned on him and Mr. Harbison, 
who were standing together, with a snort. 

“What have you, or you, ever done for the inde- 
pendence of woman?” she demanded. 

Mr. Harbison smiled. He had been looking 
rather grave until then. ‘We have at least re- 
mained unmarried,” he retorted. And then dinner 
was again announced. | 


He was to take me out, and he came across the 


43 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


room to where I sat collapsed in a chair, and bent 
over me. 

“Do you know,” he said, looking down at me 
with his clear, disconcerting gaze, “do you know 
_ that I have just grasped the situation? There was 
such a noise that I did not hear your name, and I am 
only realizing now that you are my hostess! I don’t 
know why I got the impression that this was a 
bachelor establishment, but I did. Odd, wasn’t it?” 

I positively couldn’t look away from him. My 
features seemed frozen, and my eyes were glued to 
his. As for telling him the truth—well, my tongue 
refused to move. I intended to tell him during din- 
ner if I had an opportunity : I honestly did. But the 
more I looked at him and saw how candid his eyes 
were, and how stern his mouth might be, the more 
I shivered at the plunge. And, of course, as every- 
body knows now, I didn’t tell him at all. And every 
‘moment I expected that awful old woman to ask me 
what I paid my cook, and when I had changed the 
color of my hair—Bella’s being black. 

Dinner was a half-hour late when we finally went 


44 


I MIGHT HAVE KNOWN IT 


out, Jimmy leading off with Aunt Selina, and I, as 
hostess, trailing behind the procession with Mr. 
Harbison. Dallas took in the two Mercer girls, for 
we were one man short, and Max took Anne. Leila 
Mercer was so excited that she wriggled, and as for 
‘me, the candles and the orchids—everything— 
danced around in a circle, and I just seemed to 
catch the back of my chair as it flew past. Jim had 
ordered away the wines and brought out some weak 
and cheap Chianti. Dallas looked gloomy at the 
change, but Jim explained in an undertone that 
Aunt Selina didn’t approve of expensive vintages. 
Naturally, the meal was glum enough. 

Aunt Selina had had her dinner on the train, 
so she spent her time in asking me questions the 
length of the table, and in getting acquainted with 
me. She had brought a bottle of some sort of medi- 
cine down-stairs with her, and she took a claret- 
glassful, while she talked. The stuff was called Po- 
mona: shall I ever forget it? 

It was Mr. Harbison who first noticed Takahiro. 


Jimmy’s Jap had been the only thing in the menage 
45 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


that Bella declared she had hated to leave. But he 
was doing the strangest things: his little black eyes 
shifted nervously, and he looked queer. 
_ “What’s wrong with him?” Mr. Harbison asked 
me finally, when he saw that I noticed. “Is he ill?” 

Then Aunt Selina’s voice from the other end of 
the table: | 

“Bella,” she called, in a high shrill tone, “do you 
let James eat cucumbers ?” 

“T think he must be,” I said hurriedly aside to Mr. 
Harbison. “See how his hands shake!" But Aunt 
Selina would not be ignored. 


3? 


“Cucumbers and strawberries,” she repeated im- 
pressively. “I was saying, Bella, that cucumbers 
have always given James the most fearful indiges- 
tion. And yet I see you serve them at your table. 
Do you remember what I wrote you to give him 
when he has his dreadful spells?” 

I was quite speechless; every one was looking, 
and no one could help. It was clear Jim was rack- 
ing his brain, and we sat staring. desperately at each 
other across the candles. Everything I had ever 


46 









SST 
ee y [| ea th Ty 
NN AS > ewe \ 
if y, WT) SA \as N 


Neer N AVN 
et eee, Wl 
Een enterennaren A 

: ARR 





“I GOT THE IMPRESSION THAT THIS WAS A BACHELOR 
ESTABLISH MENT ” 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


known faded from me; eight pairs of eyes bored into 
me, Mr. Harbison’s politely amused. 

“T don’t remember,” I said at last. “Really, I 
don’t believe—’ Aunt Selina smiled in a superior 
way. 

“Now, don’t you recall it?” she insisted. “TI said: 
‘Baking soda in water taken internally for cucum- 
bers; baking soda in water externally, rubbed on, 
when he gets that dreadful, itching strawberry 
rash.’ ”’ | 

I believe the dinner went on. Somebody asked 
Aunt Selina how much over-charge she had paid in 
foreign hotels, and after that she was as harmless as 
a dove. s 

Then half-way through the dinner we heard a 
crash in Takahiro’s pantry, and when he did not ap- 
pear again, Jim got up and went out to investigate. 
He was gone quite a little while, and when he came | 
back he looked worried. 

“Sick,” he replied to our inquiring glances. “One 
of the maids will come in. They have sent for a 
doctor.” 

48 


I MIGHT HAVE KNOWN IT 


Aunt Selina was for going out at once and “fix- 
ing him up,” 
fered. 

“IT wouldn’t, Miss Caruthers,” he said, in the def- 


erential manner he had adopted toward her. “You 


as she put it, but Dallas gently inter- 


don’t know what it may be. WHe’s been looking 
spotty all evening.” 

“Tt might be scarlet fever,’ Max broke’in cheer- 
fully. “I say, scarlet fever on a Mongolian—what 
color would he be, Jimmy? What do yellow and 
red make? Green?” 

“Orange,” Jim said shortly. “I wish you people 
would remember that we are trying to eat.” 

The fact was, however, that no one was really 
eating, except Mr. Harbison, who had given up try- 
ing to understand us, considering, no doubt, our sub- 
dued excitement as our normal condition. Ages 
afterward I learned that he thought my face almost 
tragic that night, and that he supposed, from the 
way I glared across the table, that I had quarreled 
with my husband! 

“T am afraid you are not well,” he said at last, 


49 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


noticing my food untouched on my plate. “We 
should not have come, any of us.” 

“T am perfectly well,’ I replied feverishly. “I am 
never ill. I—I ate a late luncheon.” 

He glanced at me keenly. “Don’t let them stay — 
and play bridge to-night,” he urged. “Miss Caru- 
thers can be an excuse, can she not? And you are 
really fagged. You look it.” 

“T think it is only ill humor,” I said, looking di- 
rectly at him. “I am angry at myself. I have done 
something silly, and I hate to be silly.” 

Max would have said “Impossible,” or something 
else trite. The Harbison man looked at me with 
interested, serious eyes. 

“Is it too late to undo it?” he asked. 

And then and there I determined that he should 
never know the truth. He could go back to South 
America and build bridges and make love to the 
Spanish girls (or are they Spanish down there?) 
and think of me always as a married woman, mar- 
ried to a dilettante artist, inclined to be stout—the 


artist, not I—and with an Aunt Selina Caruthers 
50 


I MIGHT HAVE KNOWN IT 


who made buttons and believed in the Cause. But 
never, never should he think of me as a silly little 
fool who pretended that she was the other man’s 
wife and had a lump in her throat because when a 
really nice man came along, a man who knew some- 
thing more than polo and motors, she had to 
carry on the deception to keep his respect, and be 
sedate and matronly, and see him change from per- 
fectly open admiration at first to a hands-off-she-is- 
my-host’s-wife attitude at last. 

“It can never be undone,” I said soberly. 

Well, that’s the picture as nearly as I can draw it: 
a round table with a low centerpiece of orchids in 
lavenders and pink, old silver candlesticks with fili- 
gree shades against the somber wainscoting; nine 
people, two of them unhappy—Jim and I; one of 
them complacent—Aunt Selina; one puzzled—Mr. 
Harbison; and the rest hysterically mirthful. Add 
one sick Japanese butler and grind in the mills of the - 
gods. 

Every one promptly forgot Takahiro in the ex- 


citement of the game we were all playing. Finally, © 


5I 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


however, Aunt Selina, who seemed to have Taka- 
hiro on her mind, looked up from her plate. 

“That Jap was speckled,” she asserted. “I 
wouldn’t be surprised if it’s measles. Has he been 
sniffing, James?” 

“Has he been sniffling ?” Jim threw across at me. 

“T hadn’t noticed it,’’ I said meekly, while the oth- 
ers choked. 

Max came to the rescue. “She refused to eat it,” 
he explained, distinctly and to everybody, apropos 
absolutely of nothing. “It said on the box, ‘ready 
cooked and predigested.’ She declared she didn’t 
care who cooked it, but she wanted to know who pre- 
digested it.”’ 

As every one wanted to laugh, every one did it 
then, and under cover of the noise I caught Anne’s 
eye, and we left the dining-room. The men stayed, 
and by the very firmness with which the door closed 
behind us, I knew that Dallas and Max were bring- 
ing out the bottles that Takahiro had hidden. I was 
seething. When Aunt Selina indicated a desire to 
go over the house (it was natural that she should 


52 


FA f 
: ao, Zc ( \ 


Zh 





SS g & 
TL SSN 
a | Y 


/ 


THEY WERE POURING OUT THINGS FOR HIM AND SAYING, 
“POOR OLD Jim!” 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


want to: it was her house, in a way) I excused my- 
self for a minute and flew back to the dining-room. 

It was as I had expected. Jim hadn’t cheered 
perceptibly, and the rest were patting him on the 
back, and pouring things out for him, and saying, 
“Poor old Jim” in the most maddening way. And 
the Harbison man was looking more and more puz- 
zled, and not at all hilarious. 

I descended on them like a thunderbolt. 

“That’s it!” I cried shrewishly, with my back 
against the door. “Leave her to me, all of you, and 
pat each other on the back, and say it’s gone splen- 
didly! Oh, I know you, every one!” Mr. Harbison 
got up and pulled out a chair, but I couldn’t sit: I 
folded my arms on the back. “After a while, I sup- 
pose, you'll slip up-stairs, the four of you, and have 
your game.” They looked guilty. “But I will block 
that right now. Iam going to stay—here. If Aunt 
Selina wants me, she can find me—here!” 

The first indication those men had that Mr. Har- 
bison didn’t know the state of affairs was when he 


turned and faced them. 


54 


I MIGHT HAVE KNOWN IT 


“Mrs. Wilson is quite right,” he said gravely. 
“We're a selfish lot. If Miss Caruthers is a respon- 
sibility, let us share her.” 

“To arms!” Jim said, with an affectation of light- 
ness, as they put their glasses down, and threw open 
the door. Dal’s retort, ““Whose?”’ was lost in the 
confusion, and we went into the library. On the way 
Dallas managed to speak to me. 

“If Harbison doesn’t know, don’t tell him,” he 
said in an undertone. “He’s a queer duck, in some 
ways; he mightn’t think it funny.” 

“Funny,” I choked. “It’s the least funny thing I 
ever experienced. Deceiving that Harbison man 
isn’t so bad—he thinks me crazy, anyhow. He’s 
been staring his eyes out at me—” 

“T don’t wonder. You're really lovely to-night, 
Kit, and you look like a vixen.” 

“But to deceive that harmless old lady—well, 
thank goodness, it’s nine, and she leaves in an hour 
or so.” 

But she didn’t. And that’s the story. 


55 


CHAPTER IV 








IT was infuriating to see how 
much enjoyment every one but 
Jim and myself got out of the 
situation. They howled with 
mirth over the feeblest jokes, 
and when Max told a story. 
without any point whatever, 
they all had hysteria. Imme- 
diately after dinner Aunt Selina had begun on the © 
family connection again, and after two bad breaks 
on my part, Jim offered to show her the house. The 
Mercer girls trailed along, unwilling to lose any of 
the possibilities. They said afterward that it was 
terrible: she went into all the closets, and ran her 
hand over the tops of doors and kept getting grim- 
mer and grimmer. In the studio they came across 
1 life study Jim was doing and she shut her eyes and 
56 


THE DOOR WAS CLOSED 


made the girls go out while he covered it with a 
drapery. Lollie! Who did the Bacchante dance at 
three benefits last winter and was learning a new one 
called “Eve”! : 

When they heard Aunt Selina on the second floor, 
Anne, Dal and Max sneaked up to the studio for 
cigarettes, which left Mr. Harbison to me. I was in 
the den, sitting in a low chair by the wood fire when 
he came in. He hesitated in the doorway. 

“Would you prefer being alone, or may I come 
in?’ he asked. “Don’t mind being frank. I know 
you are tired.” 

“T have a headache, and I am sulking,’”’ I said un- 
pleasantly, “but at least I am not actively venomous. 
Come in.” 

So he came in and sat down across the hearth 
from me, and-neither of us said anything, The fire- 
light flickered over the room, bringing out the faded 
hues of the old Japanese prints on the walls, gleam- 
ing in the mother-of-pearl eyes of the dragon on the 
screen, setting a grotesque god on a cabinet to nod- 
ding. And it threw into relief the strong profile of 


_the man across from me, as he stared at the fire. 


dae 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


“T am afraid I am not very interesting,” I said at 
last, when he showed no sign of breaking the 
silence. ‘“The—the illness of the butler and—Miss 
Caruthers’ arrival, have been upsetting.” 

He suddenly roused with a start from a brown 
reverie. 

“T beg your pardon,” he said, ‘““I—oh, of course 
not! I was wondering if I—if you were offended at 
what I said earlier in the evening; the—Brushwood 
Boy, you know, and all that.” 

- “Offended ?” I repeated, puzzled. 

“You see, I have been living out of the world so 
long, and never seeing any women but Indian 
squaws”—so there were no Spanish girls !—‘that 
I’m afraid I say what comes into my mind without 
circumlocution. And then—I did not know you 
were married.” 

“No, oh, no,” I said hastily. “But, of course, the 
more a woman is married—I mean, you can not say 
too many nice things to married women. They— 
need them, you know.” 

I had floundered miserably, with his eyes on me, 

58 


THE DOOR WAS CLOSED 


and I half expected him to be shocked, or to say that 
married women should be satisfied with the nice 
things their husbands say to them. But he merely 
remarked apropos of nothing, or following a line of 
thought he had not voiced, that it was trite but true 
that a good many men owed their success in life to © 
their wives. 

“And a good many owe their wives to their suc- 
cess in life,” I retorted cynically. At which he 
stared at me again. 

It was then that the real complexity of the situa- 
tion began to develop. Some one had rung the bell 
and been admitted to the library and a maid came 
to the door of the den. When she saw us she stopped 
uncertainly. Even then it struck me that she looked 
odd, and she was not in uniform. However, I was 
not informed at that time about bachelor establish- 
ments, and the first thing she said, when she had 
asked to speak to me in the hall, knocked her and her 
clothes clear out of my head. Evidently she knew 
me. 


“Miss McNair,” she said in a low tone, “there is 


oO 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


a lady in the drawing-room, a veiled person, and she 
is asking for Mr. Wilson.” 

“Can you not find him?” I asked. “He is in the 
house, probably in the studio.” 

The girl hesitated. 

“Excuse me, miss, but Miss Caruthers—’” 

Then I saw the situation. 

“Never mind,” I said. “Close the door into the 
drawing-room, and I will tell Mr. Wilson.” 

But as the girl turned toward the doorway, the 
person in question appeared in it, and raised her 
veil. I was perfectly paralyzed. It was Bella! 
Bella in a fur coat and a veil, with the most tragic. 
eyes I ever saw and entirely white except for a dab 
of rouge in the middle of each cheek. We stared at 
each other without speech. The maid turned and 
went down the hall, and with that Bella came over 
to me and clutched me by the arm. 

“Who was being carried out into that ambu- 
lance?” she demanded, glaring at me with the most 
awful intensity. 

“I’m sure I don’t know, Bella,” I said, wriggling 

60 | 


1 ALY 
WW 





“THERE iSN’T A SERVANT IN THE HOUSE,” SHE SAID 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


away from her fingers. ‘What in the world are you 
doing here? I thought you were in Europe.” 

“You are hiding something from me!” she ac- 
cused. “Itis Jim! I see it in your face.” 

“Well, it isn’t,’ I snapped. ‘It seems to me, re- 
ally, Bella, that you and Jim ought to be able to 
manage your own affairs, without dragging me in.” 
It was not pleasant, but if she was suffering, so 
was I. “Jim is as well as he ever was. He’s up- 
stairs somewhere. I’ll send for him.” 

She gripped me again, and held on while her color 
came back. 

“You'll do nothing of the kind,” she said, and she 
had quite got hold of herself again. “I do not want 
to see him: I hope you don’t think, Kit, that I came 
here to see James Wilson. Why, I have forgotten 
that there is such a person, and you know it.” 

Somebody up-stairs laughed, and I was growing 
nervous. What if Aunt Selina should come down, 
or Mr. Harbison come out of the den? 

“Why did you come, then, Bella?’ I inquired. 
“He may come in.’ 

62 


THE DOOR WAS CLOSED 


“I was passing in the motor,” she said, and I hon- 
estly think she hoped I would believe her, “and I 


3 


saw that am—” She stopped and began again. 
“T thought Jim was out of town, and I came to see 
Takahiro,” she said brazenly. “He was devoted to 
me, and Evans is going to leave, I'll tell you what 
to do, Kit. Ill go back to the dining-room, and 
you send Taka there. If any one comes, I can slip 
into the pantry.” 

“Tt’s immoral,” I protested. ‘It’s immoral to steal 
your—” 

“My own butler!’ she broke in impatiently. 
“You're not usually so scrupulous, Kit. Hurry! I 
hear that hateful Anne Brown.” 

So we slid back along the hall, and I rang for 
Takahiro. But no one came. 

“T think I ought to tell you, Bella,’ I said as we 
waited, and Bella was staring around the room— 
“T think you ought to know that Miss Caruthers is , 
here.” Bella shrugged her shoulders. 

“Well, thank goodness,” she said, “I don’t have 
to see her, The only pleasant thing I remember 

63 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


about my year of married life is that I did not meet 
Aunt Selina.” | 

I rang again, but still there was no answer. And 
then it occurred to me that the stillness below-stairs 
was almost oppressive. Bella was noticing things, 
too, for she began to fasten her veil again with a 
malicious little smile. 

“One of the things I remember my late husband 
saying,’ 
this house, and had done it for years, with flawless 
service. Stand on the bell, Kit.” 

I did. We stood there, with the table, just as it 


had been left, between us, and waited for a response. 


? 


she observed, “was that he could manage 


Bella was growing impatient. She raised her eye- 
brows (she is very handsome, Bella is) and flung 
out her chin as if she had begun to enjoy the horrible 
situation. 

I thought I heard a rattle of silver from the pan- 
try just then, and I hurried to the door in a rage. 
But the pantry was empty of servants and full of 
dishes, and all the lights were out but one, which 
was burning dimly. I could have sworn that I saw 

64 


THE DOOR WAS CLOSED 


one of the servants duck into the stairway to the 
basement, but when I got there the stairs were 
empty, and something was burning in the kitchen 
‘below. | 

Bella had followed me and was peering over my 
shoulder curiously. 

“There isn’t a servant in the house,” she said tri- 
umphantly. And when we went down to the kitch- 
en, she seemed to be right. It was in disgraceful 
order, and one of the bottles of wine that had been 
banished from the dining-room sat half empty on 
the floor. 

“Drunk!” Bella said with conviction. But I 
didn’t think so, There had not been time enough, 
for one thing. Suddenly I remembered the ambu- 
lance that had been the cause of Bella’s appearance 
—for no one could believe her silly story about 
Takahiro. I didn’t wait to voice my suspicion to 
her; I simply left her there, staring helplessly at the 
confusion, and ran up-stairs again: through the din- 
ing-room, past Jimmy and Aunt Selina, past Leila 
Mercer and Max, who were flirting on the stairs, 


65 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


up, up to the servants’ bedrooms, and there my sus- 
picions were verified. There was every evidence of 
a hasty flight; in three bedrooms five trunks stood 
locked and ominous, and the closets yawned with 
open doors, empty. Bella had been right; there was 
not a servant in the house. 

As I emerged from the untidy emptiness of the 
servants’ wing, I met Mr. Harbison coming out of 
the studio. | 

“T wish you would let me do some of this running 
about for you, Mrs. Wilson,” he said ‘gravely. “You 
are not well, and I can’t think of anything worse for 
a headache. Has the butler’s illness clogged the 
household machinery ?” 

“Worse,” I replied, trying not to breathe in 
gasps. “I wouldn’t be running around—like this— 
but there is not a servant in the house! They have 
gone, the entire lot.” | 

“That’s odd,” he said slowly. “Gone! Are you 
sure?” 

In reply I pointed to the servants’ wing. “Trunks 
packed,” I said tragically, “rooms empty, kitchen 

66 





THROWING ON THEIR WRAPS IN A HURRY 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


and pantries full of dishes. Did you ever hear of 
anything like it?” 
“Never,” he asserted. “It makes me suspect—” 


What he suspected he did not say; instead he turned 


- on his heel, without a word of explanation, and ran 


down the stairs. I stood staring after him, wonder- 
ing if every one in the place had gone crazy. Then 
I heard Betty Mercer scream and the rest talking — 
loud and laughing, and Mr. Harbison came up the 
stairs again two at a time. | 

“How long has that Jap been ailing, Mrs. Wil- 
son?” he asked. 

“T_T don’t know,” I replied helplessly. “What 
is the trouble, anyhow ?” 

“T think he probably has something contagious,” 
he said, “and it has scared the servants away. As 
Mr. Brown said, he looked spotty. I suggested to 
your husband that it might be as well to get the 
house emptied—in case we are correct.” | 

“Oh, yes, by all means,” I said eagerly. I couldn’t 
get away too soon. “I'll go and get my—”’ Then 
I stopped. Why, the man wouldn’t expect me to 

68 


THE DOOR WAS. CLOSED 


leave; I would have to play out the wretched farce 
to the end! 

“Tl go down and see them off,” I finished lamely, 
and we went together down the stairs. 

Just for the moment I forgot Bella altogether. I 
found Aunt Selina: bonneted and cloaked, taking a 
stirrup cup of Pomona for her nerves, and the rest 
throwing on their wraps in a hurry. Down-stairs 
Max was telephoning for his car, which wasn’t due 
for an hour, and Jim was walking up and down, 
swearing under his breath. With the prospect of 
getting rid of them all, and of going home comfort- 
ably to try to forget the whole wretched affair, I 
cheered up quite a lot. I even played up my part of 
hostess, and Dallas told me, aside, that I was a brick, 

Just then Jim threw open the front door. 

There was a man on the top step, with his mouth 
full of tacks, and he was nailing something to the 
door, just below Jim’s Florentine bronze knocker, 
and standing back with his head on one side to see 
if it was straight. : 


“What are you doing?’ Jim demanded fiercely, 


69 






fy; 





ATTA TVATT 
ml 


i 


Ae, 
ty 


A MAN NAILING SOMETHING TO THE DOOR 


THE DOOR WAS CLOSED 


but the man only drove another tack. It was Mr. 
Harbison who stepped outside and read the card. 

It said “Smallpox.” 

“Smallpox,” Mr. Harbison read, as if he couldn’t 
believe it. Then he turned to us, huddled in the hall. 

“Tt seems it wasn’t measles, after all,” he said 
cheerfully. “I move we get into Mr. Reed’s auto- 
mobile out there, and have a vaccination party. I 
suppose even you blasé society folk have not ex- 
hausted that kind of diversion.” 

But the man on the step spat his tacks in his hand 
and spoke for the first time. 

“No, you don’t,’ he said. “Not on your life. 
Just step back, please, and close the door. This 


house is quarantined.” 


71 


CHAPTER V 


eee \ FROM THE TREE OF LOVE 







\ ). vN THERE 1s hardly any use trying to de- 
; scribe what followed. Anne Brown 
began to cry, and talk about the 
\ gr children. (She went to Europe 
WM once and stayed until they all got 
over the whooping-cough.) And Dallas 
SS said he had a pull, because his mill con- 
trolled I forget how many votes, and the 


thing to do was to be quiet and comfortable and we 





would get out in the morning. Max took it as a huge 
joke, and somebody found him at the telephone, 
calling up his club. The Mercer girls were hyster- 
ically giggling, and Aunt Selina sat on a stiff-backed 
chair and took aromatic spirits of ammonia. As for 
Jim, he had collapsed on the lowest step of the stairs, 
and sat there with his head in his hands. When he 
did look up, he didn’t dare to look at me. | 


72 


FROM THE TREE OF LOVE 


The Harbison man was arguing with the impas- 
sive individual on the top step outside, and I saw 
him get out his pocketbook and offer a crisp bundle 
of bills. But the man from the board of health 
only smiled and tacked at his offensive sign. After 
a while Mr. Harbison came in and closed the door, 
and we stared at one another. 

“I know what I’m going to do,” I said, swallow- 
ing a lump in my throat, “I’m going to get out 
through a basement window at the back. I’m going 
home.” ; 

“Home!” Aunt Selina gasped, jumping up and 
almost dropping her ammonia bottle. “My dear 
Bella! Home?” 

Jimmy groaned at the foot of the stairs, but Anne 
Brown was getting over her tears and now she 
turned on me in a temper. 

“Tt’s all your fault,’ she said. “I was going to 
stay at home and get a little sleep—” 

“Well, you can sleep now,’ Dallas broke in. 
“There'll be nothing to do but sleep.” 

“T think you haven’t grasped the situation, Dal,” 


73 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


I said icily. ‘‘There will be plenty to do. There 
isn’t a servant in the house!” 

“No servants!” everybody cried at once. The 
Mercer girls stopped giggling. 

“Holy cats!’ Max stopped in the act of hanging 
up his overcoat. “Do you mean—why, I can’t shave 
myself! I’ll cut my head off.” | 

“You'll do more than that,’ I retorted grimly. 
“You will carry coal and tend fires and empty ash 
pans, and when you are not doing any of those 
things there will be pots and pans to wash and beds 
to make.” 

Then there was a row. We had worked back to 
the den now, and I stood in front of the fireplace and 
let the storm beat around me, and tried to look per- 
fectly cold and indifferent, and not to see Mr. Harbi- 
son’s shocked face. No wonder he thought them a 
lot of savages, browbeating their hostess the way 
they did. 

“Tt’s a fool thing anyhow,” Max Reed wound 
up, “to celebrate the anniversary of a divorce—espe- 


’ 


cially—” Here he caught Jim’s eye and stopped. 


74 


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SOMEBODY FOUND HIM CALLING UP HIS CLUB 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


But I had suddenly remembered. Bella down 1n the 
basement! 

Could anything have been worse? And of course 
she would have hysteria and then turn on me and | 
blame me for it all. It all came over me at once and 
overwhelmed me, while Anne was crying and saying 
she wouldn’t cook if she starved for it, and Aunt Se- 
lina was taking off her wraps. I felt queer all over, 
and I sat down suddenly. Mr. Harbison was look- 
ing at me, and he brought mea glass of wine. ) 

“Tt won’t be so bad as you fear,” he said comfort- 
ingly. “There will be no danger once we are vac- 
cinated, and many hands make light work. They are 
pretty raw now, because the thing is new to them, 
but by morning they will be reconciled.” 

“Tt isn’t the work: it is something entirely differ- 
ent,” I said. And it was. Bella and work could 
hardly be spoken in the same breath. 

If I had only turned her out as she deserved to be, 
when she first came, instead of allowing her to carry 
through the wretched farce about seeing Takahiro! 
Or if I had only run to the basement the moment 

76 


yg 


FROM THE :‘TREE OF LOVE 


the house was quarantined, and got her out the area- 
way or the coal-hole! And now time was flying, and 
Aunt Selina had me by the arm, and any moment I 
expected Bella to pounce on us through the doorway 
and the whole situation to explode with a bang. 

It was after eleven before they were rational 
enough to discuss ways and means, and, of course, 
the first thing suggested was that we all adjourn 
below-stairs and clean up after dinner. I could have 
slain Max Reed for the notion, and the Mercer girls 
for taking him up. 

“Of course we will,” they said in a duet. ‘What 
a lark!’ And they actually began to pin up their 
dinner gowns. It was Jim who stopped that. 

“Oh, look here, you people,” he objected, “I’m 
not going to let you do that. We'll get some serv- 
ants in to-morrow. Ill go down and put out the 
lights. There will be enough clean dishes for break- 
fast.” 

It was lucky for me that they started a new dis- 
cussion then and there about who would get the 
breakfast. In the midst of the excitement I slipped 


FL 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


away to carry the news to Bella. She was where 
I had left her, and she had made herself a cup of tea, 
and was very much at home, which was natural. 


b 


“Do you know,” she said ominously, “that you 
_have been away for two hours; and that I have 
gone through agonies of nervousness for fear Jim 
Wilson would come down and think I came here to 
see him?” 

“No one would think that, Bella,” I soothed her. 
“Everybody knows you loathe him—Jim, too.” She 
looked at me over the edge of her cup. 

“T’ll run along now,” she said, “since Takahiro 
isn’t here. And if Jim has any sense at all, he will 
clear out every maid in the house. I never saw such 
a kitchen in all my life. Well, lead the way, Kit. I 
suppose they are deep in bridge, or roulette, or 
something.” 

She was fixing her veil, and I saw I would have 
to tell her. Personally, I would much rather have 
told her the house was on fire. 

‘‘Wait a minute, Bella,” I said. ‘‘You see, some- 
thing queer has happened. You know this is the an- 


78 


FROM THE TREE OF LOVE 


niversary—well, you know what it is—and Jim was 
awfully glum. So we thought we would come—” 

“What are you driving at?” she demanded. “You 
are sea-green, Kit. What’s the matter? You 
needn’t think I mind because Jim has a jollification 
to celebrate his divorce.” 

“It—it was Takahiro—in the ambulance,” I blurt- 
ed. “Smallpox. We—Bella, we are shut in, quar- 
antined.,”’ 

She didn’t faint. She just sat down and stared at 
me, and I stared back at her. Then a miserable 
alarm clock on the table suddenly went off like an 
explosion, and Bella began to laugh. I knew what 
that was—hysteria. She always had attacks like 
that when things went wrong. I was quite despair- 
ing by that time; I hoped they would all hear her 
and come down-stairs and take her up and put her to 
bed like a Christian, so she could giggle her soul out. 
But after a bit she quieted down and began to cry 
softly, and I knew the worst was over. I gave her 
a shake, and she was so angry that she got over it 
altogether. 


79 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


“Kit, you are horrid,” she choked. “Don’t you see 
what a position I am in? I am not going up-stairs 
to face Anne and the rest of them. You can just 
put me in the coal cellar.” 

“TIsn’t there a window you could get through?” I 
asked desperately. “Locking the door doesn’t shut 
up a whole house.” | 

_Bella’s courage revived at that, and she said yes, 
there were windows, plenty of them, only she didn’t 
see how she could get out, And I said she would 
have to get out, because I was playing Bella in the 
performance, and I didn’t care to have an under- 
study. Then the situation dawned on her, and she 
sat down and laughed herself weak in the knees. 
Of course she wanted to stay, then, and see the fun 
out. But I was firm; she would have to go, and I 
told her so. Things were complicated enough with- 
out her. 

Well, we looked funny, no doubt. Bella ina Rus- 
sian pony automobile coat over the black satin she 
had worn at the Clevelands’ dinner, and I in cream 
lace, the skirt gathered up from the kitchen floor, 

80 


Peet HE TREE OF LOVE 


with Bella’s ermine pelerine around my bare shoul- 
ders, and dishes and overturned chairs everywhere. 

Bella knew more about the lower regions of her 
ex-home than J would have thought. She opened a 
door in a corner and led the way through a narrow 
hall past the refrigerating-room, to a huge, cement- 
ed cellar, with a furnace in the center, and a half- 
dozen electric lights making it really brilliant. 

“Get a chair,” Bella said over her shoulder, ex- 
citedly. “I can get out easily here, through the coal- 
hole. Imagine my—” 

But it was my turn to grip Bella. From behind 
the furnace were coming the most terrible sounds, 
rasping noises that fairly frayed the silk of my 
nerves. We stood petrified for an instant. Then 
Bella laughed. “They are not all gone,” she said 
carefully. “Some one is asleep there.” 

We tiptoed to where we could see around the fur- 
nace, and, sure enough, some one was asleep there. 
Only, it was not one of the servants; it was a portly 
policeman, with a newspaper and an empty plate on 
the floor on one side, and a champagne bottle on the 

81 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


other. He had slid down in his chair, with his chin 
on his brass buttons, and his helmet had rolled a 
dozen feet away. Bella had to clap her hand over 
her mouth, 

“Fairly caught!’’ she whispered. “Sartor Re- 
sartus, the arrester arrested. Oh, Jim and his flaw- 
less service!” 

But after we got over our surprise, we saw the 
situation was serious. The policeman was threaten- 
ing to awaken. Once he stopped snoring to yawn 
noisily, and we beat a hasty retreat. Bella switched 
off the lights in a hurry and locked the door behind 
us. We hardly breathed until we were back in the 
kitchen again, and everything quiet. And then 
Jimmy called my name from up above somewhere. 

“T am going to call him down, Bella,” I said 
firmly. “Let him help you out. I’m sure I don’t 
see why I should have all this when the two of 
you—” | 

“Oh, no, no! Surely, Kit, you wouldn’t be so 
cruel!” she whispered pleadingly. “You know what 
he would think. He—oh, Kit, let them all get set- 

82 





Wt STOOD PETRIFIED FOR AN INSTANT 


WHEN A MAN. MARRIES 


tled for the night, and then come down, like a dear, 
and help me out. I know loads of ways—honestly 
Licore 

“Tf I leave you here,’’ I debated, “what about the 
policeman ?” 

“Never mind him’’—frantically. “Listen! There’s 
Jim up in the pantry. Run, for the sake of Heaven!” 

So—I ran. At the top of the stairs I met Jimmy, 
very crumpled as to shirt-front and dejected as to 
face. 

“T’ve been hunting everywhere for you,” he said 
dismally. “I thought you had added to the general 
merriment by falling down-stairs and breaking your 
neck.” 

I went past him with my chin up. Now that I 
had time to think about it, I was furiously angry 
with him. 

“Kit!” he called after me appealingly, but I would 
not hear. Then he adopted different tactics. He 
took advantage of my catching my foot in the lace 
of my gown to pass me, and to stand with his back 
against the door. 

84 


FROM THE TREE OF LOVE 


“You're not going until you hear me, Kit,” he de- 
clared miserably. “In the first place, for all you are 
down on me, is it my fault? Honestly, now, is it 
my fault?” 

I refused to speak. 

“TI was coming home to be miserable alone,” he 
went on, “and—oh, I know you meant well, Kit; 
but you asked all these crazy people here.” 

“Perhaps you will give me credit for some 
things,’ I said wearily. “I did not give Takahiro 
smallpox, for instance, and—if you will permit me 
to mention the fact—Aunt Selina is not my Aunt 
Selina.” 

“That’s what I wanted to speak to you about,” 
Jimmy went on wretchedly, trying not to look at 
me. “You see, when they were rowing so about, 
who would get the breakfast—I never saw such a 
lot of people; half of them never touch breakfast, 
but of course now they want all kinds of things— 
when they were talking, Aunt Selina said she knew 
you would get it, being the hostess, and responsible, 
besides knowing where things are kept.” He had 

85 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


fixed his eyes on the orchids, and he looked 
shrunken, actually shrunken. “I thought,” he fin- 
ished, “you might give me a few pointers now, and 
I could come down in the morning, and—and fuss 
up something, coffee and so on. I would say you 
did it! Oh, hang it all, Kit, why don’t you say 
something ?” | 

“What do you want me to say?” I demanded. 
“That I love to cook, and of course I’ll fix trays and 
carry them up in the morning to Anne Brown and 
Leila Mercer and the rest; and that I will have the 
shaving water ready—” 

“T know what I’m going to do,” Jimmy said, with 
a sudden resolution. “Aunt Selina and her money 
can go to blazes. I am going right up-stairs and 
tell her the truth, tell her who you are, what I am, 
and all the rest of it.””. He opened the door. 

“You'll do nothing of the kind,” I gasped, catch- 
ing him in time. “Don’t you dare, Jimmy Wilson! 
Why, what would they think of me? After letting 
her call me Bella, and him—Jim, if Mr. Harbison 
ever learns the truth—I—I will take poison. If we 

86 


PROM THE TREE OF LOVE 


are going to be shut up here together, we will have 
to carry it on. I couldn’t stand the disgrace.” 

In spite of an heroic effort, Jim looked relieved. 
“They have been hunting for the linen closet,” he 
said, more cheerfully, “and there will be room 
enough, J think. Harbison and I will hang out in 
the studio; there are two couches there. I’m afraid 
you ll have to take Aunt Selina, Kit.” | 

“Certainly,” I said coldly. That was the way it 
was all along. Whenever there was something to 
do that no one else would undertake—any unpleas- 
ant responsibility—that entire mongrel household 
turned with one gesture and pointed its finger at me! 
Well, it'is over now, and I ought not to be bitter, 
considering everything. 

It was quite characteristic of that memorable 
evening (that is quite novelesque, I think) that my 
interview with Jimmy should have a sensational end- 
ing. He was terribly down, of course, and as I was 
trying to pass him to get to the door, he caught my 
hand. 

“You're a girl in a thousand, Kit,” he said for- 

87 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


lornly. “If I were not so damnably, hopelessly, 
idiotically in love with—somebody else, I should: be 
crazy about you.” 

“Don’t be maudlin,” I retorted. “Would you 
mind letting my hand go?” [I felt sure Bella could 
hear. 

“Oh, come now, Kit,” he implored, “‘we’ve al- 
ways got along so well. It’s a shame to let a thing 
like this make us bad friends. Aren’t you ever go- 
ing to forgive me?” | 

“Never,” I said promptly. ‘When I once get 
away, I don’t want ever to see you again. I was 
never so humiliated in my life. I loathe you!’ 

Then I turned around, and, of course, there was 
Aunt Selina with her eyes protruding until you 
could have knocked them off with a stick, and be- 
side her, very red and uncomfortable, Mr. Harbi- 
son! 

“Bella!’’ she said in a shocked voice, “‘is that the 
way you speak to your husband! It is high time I 
came here, I think, and took a hand in this affair.” 

“Oh, never mind, Aunt Selina,” Jim said, with 


88 


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WITH HIS CHIN ON HIS BRASS BUTTONS 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


a sheepish grin. “Kit—Bella is tired and nervous. 
This is a h—deuce of a situation. No—er—serv- 
ants, and all that.” 

But Aunt Selina did mind, and showed it. She 
pulled the unlucky Harbison man through the door 
and closed it, and then stood glaring at both of us. 

“Every little quarrel is an apple knocked from the 
tree of love,’ she announced oratorically. 

“This was a very little quarrel,’ Jim said, edging 
_toward the door; “a—a green apple, Aunt Selina, 
a colicky little green apple.” But she was not to 
be diverted. 

“Bella,” she said severely, “you said you loathed 
him. You didn’t mean that.” 

“But I do!” I cried hysterically. ‘There isn’t any 
word to tell how I—how I detest him.” 

Then I swept past them all and flew to Bella’s 
dressing-room and locked myself in. Aunt Selina 
knocked until she was tired, then gave up and went 
to bed. 

That was the night Anne Brown’s pearl collar was 


stolen! 


go 


CHAPTER VI 


A MIGHTY POOR JOKE 


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a gold-backed brush into a muff at a reception. You 
remember the ivory dressing set that Theodora 
Bucknell had, fastened with fine gold chains? And 
the sensation it caused at the Bucknell cotillion when 
Mrs. Van Zire went sweeping to her carriage with 
two feet of gold chain hanging from the front of 


her wrap? 


QI 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


But Anne’s pearl collar was different. In the 
first place, instead of three or four hundred people, 
the suspicion had to be divided among ten. And 
of those ten, at least eight of us were friends, and 
the other two had been vouched for by the Browns 
and Jimmy. It was a horrible mix-up. For the 
necklace was gone—there couldn’t be any doubt of 
that—and although, as Dallas said, it couldn’t get 
out of the house, still, there were plenty of places 
to hide the thing. 

The worst of our trouble really originated with 
Max Reed, after all. For it was Max who made 
the silly wager over the telephone, with Dick Bag- 
ley. He bet five hundred even that one of us, at 
least, would break quarantine within the next twen- 
ty-four hours, and, of course, that settled it. Dick 
told it around the club as a joke, and a man who 
owns a newspaper heard him and called up the pa- 
per. Then the paper called up the health office, 
after setting up a flaming scare-head, “Will Money 
Free Them! Board of Health versus Million- 


dire,” 


Q2 


A MIGHTY POOR JOKE 


It was almost three when the house settled down 
—nobody had any night-clothes, although finally, 
through Dallas, who gave them to Anne, who gave 
them to the rest, we got some things of Jimmy’s— 
and I was still dressed. ‘The house was perfectly 
quiet, and, after listening carefully, I went slowly 
down the stairs. There was a light in the hall, and 
another back in the dining-room, and I got along 
without any trouble. But the pantry, where the 
stairs led down, was dark, and the wretched swing- 
ing door would not stay open. 

I caught ry skirt in the door as I went through, 
and I had to stop to loosen it. And in that awful 
minute I heard some one breathing just beside me. 
I had stooped to my gown, and I turned my head 
without straightening—I couldn’t have raised my- 
self to an erect posture, for my knees were giving 
way under me—and just at my feet lay the still 
glowing end of a match! 

_ I had to swallow twice before I could speak. 
Then I said sharply: 
“Who's there?” 


93 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


The man was so close it is a wonder I had not 
walked into him; his voice was right at my ear. 

“T am sorry I startled you,” he said quietly. “I 
was afraid to speak suddenly, or move, for fear I 

would do—what.I have done.” 
It was Mr. Harbison. 

“I—I thought you were—it is very late,’ I man- 
aged to say, with dry lips. “Do you know where 
the electric switch is?” 

“Mrs. Wilson!” It was clear he had not known 
me before. ‘Why, no; don’t you?” 

“T am all confused,” I muttered, and beat a re- 
treat into the dining-room. There, in the friendly 
light, we could at least see each other, and I think 
he was as much impressed by the fact that I had not 
undressed as I was by the fact that he had, partly. 
He wore a hideous dressing-gown of Jimmy’s, much 
too small, and his hair, parted and plastered down 
in the early evening, stood up in a sort of brown 
brush all over his head. He was trying to flatten 
it with his hands. 

“It must be three o’clock,” he said, with polite 


94 


PeemiGH TY POOR JOKE 


surprise, “and the house is like a barn. You ought 
not to be running around with your arms uncov- 
ered, Mrs. Wilson. Surely you could have called 
some of us.” 

“T didn’t wish to disturb any one,” I said, with 
distinct truth. 

““T suppose you are like me,” he said. ‘The nov- 
elty of the situation—and everything. I got to 
thinking things over, and then I realized the studio 
was getting cold, so I thought I would come down 
and take a look at the furnace. I didn’t suppose any 
one else would think of it. But I lost myself in that 
pantry, stumbled against a half-open drawer, and 
nearly went down the dumb-waiter.” And, as if in 
judgment on me, at that instant came two rather 
terrific thumps from somewhere below, and inar- 
ticulate words, shouted rather than spoken. It was 
uncanny, of course, coming as it did through the 

register at our feet. Mr. Harbison looked startled. 
, “Oh, by the way,” I said, as carelessly as I could. 
“In the excitement, I forgot to mention it. There 


is a policeman asleep in the furnace-room. I—I 


o5 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


suppose we will have to keep him now,” I finished 
as airily as possible. 

“Gh, a policeman—in the cellar,” he repeated, 
staring at me, and he moved toward the pantry 
door. 

“You needn’t go down,” I said feverishly, with 
visions of Bella Knowles. sitting on the kitchen 
table, surrounded by soiled dishes and all the cheer- 
less aftermath of a dinner party. ‘Please don’t go 
down. J—it’s one of my rules—never to let a 
stranger go down to the kitchen. I—I’m peculiar 
—that way—and besides, it’s—it’s mussy.” 

Bang! Crash! through the register pipe, and 
some language quite articulate. Then silence. 

“Look here, Mrs. Wilson,” he said resolutely. 
“What do I care about the kitchen? I’m going 
down and arrest that policeman for disturbing the 
peace. He will have the pipes down.” 

“You must not go,” I said, with desperate firm- 
ness. “He—he is probably in a very dangerous 


state just now. We—I—locked him in.” 


96 


\N\\\ 
Ny 
iW 





“YOU WRETCH!”’ SHE SAID UNGRATEFULLY, AFTER SHE 
HAD YAWNED 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


The Harbison man grinned and then became se- 
rious. 

“Why don’t you tell me the whole thing?’ he 
demanded. “You've been in trouble all evening, and 
—you can trust me, you know, because I am a stran- 
ger; because the minute this crazy quarantine is 
raised I am off to the Argentine Republic,” (perhaps 
he said Chili) “and because I don’t know anything 
at all about you. You see, I have to believe what 
you tell me, having no personal knowledge of any 
of you to go on. Now tell me—whom have you 
hidden in the cellar, besides the policeman ?” 

There was no use trying to deceive him: he was 
looking straight into my eyes, So I decided to make 
the best of a bad thing. Anyhow, it was going to 
require strength to get Bella through the coal-hole 
with one arm and restrain the policeman with the 
other. 

“Come,” I said, making a sudden resolution, and 
led the way down the stairs. 

He said nothing when he saw Bella, for which I 
was grateful. She was sitting at the table, with her 

98 


A MIGHTY POOR JOKE 


arms in front of her, and her head buried in them. 
And then I saw she was asleep. Her hat and veil 
laid beside her, and she had taken off her coat and 
| draped it around her. She had rummaged out a cold 
pheasant and some salad, and had evidently had a 
little supper. Supper and a nap, while I worried 
myself gray-headed about her! 

“She—she came in unexpectedly—something 
about the butler,” I explained under my breath. 
““And—she doesn’t want to stay. She is on bad 
terms with—with some of the people up-stairs. You 
can see how impossible the situation is.” 

“T doubt if we can get her out,” he said, as if the 
situation were quite ordinary. “However, we can 
try. She seems very comfortable. It’s a pity to 
rouse her.” 

Here the prisoner in the furnace room broke out 
afresh. It sounded as though he had taken a lump 
of coal and was attacking the lock. Mr. Harbison 
followed the noise, and I could hear him arguing, 
not gently. 


“Another sound,’ he finished, “and you won’t 


99 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


get out of here at all, unless you crawl up the fur- 
nace pipe!”’ 

When he came back. Bella was rousing. She 
lifted her head with her eyes shut and then opened 
_ them one at a time, blinked, and sat up. She didn’t 
see him at first. 

“You wretch!’ she said ungratefully, after she 
had yawned. “Do you know what time it is? And 
that—” Then she saw Mr. Harbison and sat star- 
ing at him. 

“This is Mr. Harbison,” I said to her hastily. 
“THe—he came with Anne and Dal and—he is shut 
in, too.” 

By that time Bella had seen how handsome he 
was, and she took a hair-pin out of her mouth, and 
arched her eyebrows, which was always Bella’s best 
pose. 

“T am Miss Knowles,” she said sweetly (of course, 
the court had given her back her name), “and I 
stopped in to-night, thinking the house was empty, 
to see about a—a butler. Unfortunately, the house 
was quarantined just at that time, and—here I am. 


100 


A MIGHTY POOR JOKE 


Surely there can not be any harm in helping me to 
get out?’ (Pleading tone.) “I have not been ex- 
posed to any contagion, and in the exhausted state 
of my health the confinement would be positively 
dangerous.” 

She rolled her eyes at him, and I could see she 
was making an impression. Of course she was free. 
She had a perfect right to marry again, but I will 
say this: Bella is a lot better looking by electric 
light than she is the next morning. 

The upshot of it was that the gentleman who 
built bridges and looked down on society from a 
lofty, lonely pinnacle agreed to help one of the most 
gleaming members of the aforesaid society to out- 
wit the law. 

It took about fifteen minutes to quiet the police- 
man. Nobody ever knew what Mr. Harbison did 
to him, but for twenty-four hours he was quite 
tractable. He changed after that, but that comes 
later in the story. Anyhow, the Harbison man went 
up-stairs and came down with a Bagdad curtain and 
-acushion to match, and took them into the furnace- 


IOI 





BELLA WAS ON A CHAIR READY TO FOLLOW 


A MIGHTY POOR JOKE 


room, and came out and locked the door behind 
him, and then we were ready for Bella’s escape. 

But there were four special officers and three re- 
porters watching the house, as a result of Max 
Reed’s idiocy. Once, after trying all the other 
windows and finding them guarded, we discovered 
a little bit of a hole in an out-of-the-way corner that 
looked like a ventilator and was covered with a 
heavy wire screen. No prisoners ever dug their way 
out of a dungeon with more energy than that with 
which we attacked that screen, hacking at it with 
kitchen knives, whispering like conspirators, being 
scratched with the ragged edges of the wire, frozen 
with the cold air one minute and boiling with excite- 
ment the next. And when the wire was cut, and 
Bella had rolled her coat up and thrust it through, 
and was standing on a chair ready to follow, some- 
thing outside that had looked like a barrel moved 
and said, “Oh, I wouldn’t do that if I were you. It 
would be certain to be undignified, and probably it 
would be unpleasant—later.” 

We coaxed and pleaded and tried to bribe, and 

103 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


that happened, as it turned out, to be one of the worst 
things we had to endure. For the whole conversa- 
tion came out the next afternoon in the paper, with 
the most awful drawings, and the reporter said it 
was the flashing of the jewels we wore that first 
attracted his attention. And that brings me back 
to the robbery. : 

For when we had crept back to the kitchen, and 
Bella was fumbling for her handkerchief to cry into 
and the Harbison man was trying to apologize for 
the language he had used to the reporter, and I was 
on the verge of a nervous chill—well, it was then 
that Bella forgot all about crying and jumped and 
held out her arm. 

“My diamond bracelet!” she screeched. “Look, 
I’ve lost it.” 

Well, we went over every inch of that basement, 
until I knew every crack in the flooring, every spot 
on the cement. And Bella was nasty, and said that 
she had never seen that part of the house in such 
condition, and that if I had acted like a sane person 
and put her out, when she had no business there at © 

104 


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WE WENT OVER EVERY INCH OF THAT BASEMENT 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


all, she would have had her freedom and her brace- 
let, and that if we were playing a joke on her (as if 
we felt like joking!) we would please give her the 
bracelet and let her go and die in a corner; she felt 
very queer. 

At half-past four o’clock we gave up. 

“Ips gone,’ I said. “I don’t believe you wore it 
here. No one could have taken it. There wasn’t 
a soul in this part of the house, except the policeman 
and he’s locked in.” 

At five o’clock we put her to sleep in the den. 
She was in a fearful temper, and I was glad enough 
to be able to shut the door on her. Tom Harbison 
—that was his name—helped me to creep up-stairs, 
and wanted to get me a glass of ale to make me 
sleep. But I said it would be of no use, as I had to 
get up and get the breakfast. The last thing he 
said was that the policeman seemed above the aver- 
age in intelligence, and perhaps we-could train him 
to do plain cooking and dish-washing. 

I did not go to sleep at once. I lay on the chintz- 
covered divan in Bella’s dressing-room and stared 

106 


A MIGHTY POOR JOKE 


at the picture of her with the violets underneath. I 
couldn’t see what there was about Bella to inspire 
such undying devotion, but I had to admit that she 
had looked handsome that night, and that the Har- 
bison man had certainly been impressed. 

At seven o’clock Jimmy Wilson pounded at my 
door, and I could have choked him joyfully. I 
dragged myself to the door and opened it, and then 
I heard excited voices. Everybody seemed to be up 
but Aunt Selina, and they were all talking at once. 

Anne Brown was in the center of the group, wav- 
ing her hands, while Dallas was trying to hook the 
back of her gown with one hand and hold a blanket 
around himself with the other. No one was dressed 
except Anne, and she had been up for an hour, look- 
ing in shoes and under the corners of rugs and 
around the bed clothing for her jeweled collar. 
When she saw me she began all over again. 

“T had it on when I went into my room,” she de-: 
clared, “and I put it on the dressing-table when I 
undressed. I meant to put it under my pillow, but 
I forgot. And I didn’t sleep well: I was awake half 

107 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


the night. Wasn’t I, Dal? Then, when the clock 
down-stairs in the hall was chiming five, something 
roused me, and I sat up in bed. It was still dark, 
but I pinched Dal and said there was somebody in 
the room. You remember that, don’t you, Dal?” 

“T thought you had nightmare,” he said sheep- 
ishly. 

“T lay still for ages, it seemed to me, and then— 
the door into the hall closed. I heard the catch 
click. I turned on the light over the bed then, and 
the room was empty. I thought of my collar, and 
although it seemed ridiculous, with the house sealed 
as it is, and all of us friends for years—well, I got 
up and looked, and it was gone!” 

No one spoke for an instant. It was a queer situ- 
ation, for the collar was gone; Anne’s red eyes 
showed it was true. And there we stood, every one 
of us a miserable picture of guilt, and tried to look 
innocent and debonair and unsuspicious. Finally 
- Jim held up his hand and signified that he wanted to 
say something. 

“Tt’s like this,” he said : “until this thing is cleared 

108 


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a 





(33 
FOR HEAVEN’S SAKE, LET’S TRY TO BE SANE!” 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


up, for Heaven’s sake, let’s try to be sane! If every 
fellow thinks the other fellow did it, this house will 
be a nice little hell to live in. And if anybody’’— 
here he glared around—“if anybody has got funny 
and is hiding those jewels, I want to say that he’d 
better speak up now. Later, it won’t be so easy for 
him. It’s a mighty poor joke.” 
But nobody spoke. 


Tio 


CHAPTER VII 


WE MAKE AN OMELET 






IT was Betty Mercer 
who said she was hungry, 
and got us switched 
from the delicate sub- 
ject of which was the 
{> thief to the quite as 
. | pressing subject of 
which was to be cook. Aunt 
Selina had slept quietly 
through the whole thing—we learned afterward 
that she customarily slept on her left side, which 
was on her good ear. We gathered in the Dallas 
Browns’ room, and Jimmy proposed a plan. 

“We can have anything sent in that we want,” he 
suggested speciously, “and if Dal doesn’t make good 

III 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


with the city fathers, you girls can get some clothes 
anyhow. Then, we can have dinner sent from one 
of the hotels.” 

“Why not all the meals?’ Max suggested. “I 
hope you’re not going to be small about things, 
Jimmy.” : 

“It ought to be easy,” Jim persisted, ignoring the 
remark, “for nine reasonably intelligent people to 
boil eggs and make coffee, which is all we need for 
breakfast, with some fruit.” 

“Nine of us!” Dallas said wickedly, looking at 
Tom Harbison, who was out of earshot, “Why nine 
of us? I thought Kit here, otherwise known as 
Bella, was going to show off her housewifely skill.” 

It ended, however, with Mr. Harbison writing 
out a lot of slips, cook, scullery-maid, chamber- 
maid, parlor-maid, furnace-man, and butler, and as 
that left two people over—we didn’t count Aunt, 
Selina—he added another furnace-man and a 
trained nurse. Betty Mercer drew the trained nurse 
slip, and, of course, she was delighted. It seems 
funny now to look back and think what a dreadful 


x 


II2 


WE MAKE AN OMELET 


time she really had, for Aunt Selina took the grippe, 
you know, that very day. 

It was fate that I should go back to that awful 
kitchen, for of course my slip said “cook.” Mr. Har- 
bison was butler, and Max and Dal got the furnace, 
although neither of them had ever been nearer to 
a bucket of coal than the coupons on mining stock. 
Anne got the bedrooms, and Leila was parlor-maid. 
It was Jimmy who got the scullery work, but he 
was quite crushed by this time, and did not protest 
at all. 

Max was in a very bad temper: I suppose he had 
not had enough sleep—no one had. But he came 
over while the lottery was going on and stood over 
me and demanded unpleasantly, in a whisper, that I 
stop masquerading as another man’s wife and gener- 
ally making a fool of myself—which is the way he 
put it. And I knew in my heart that he was right, 
and I hated him for it. 

“Why don’t you go and tell him—them ?” I asked 
nastily. No one was paying any attention to us. 
“Tell them that, to be obliging, I have nearly 


113 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


drowned in a sea of lies; tell them that I am 
not only not married, but that I never intend to 
marry; tell them that we are a lot of idiots with ~ 
nothing better to do than to trifle with strangers 
within our gates, people who build—I mean, people 
that are worth two to our one! Run and tell them.” 

He looked at me for a minute, then he turned on 
his heel and left me. It looked as though Max 
might be going to be difficult. 

While I was improvising an apron out of a towel, 
and Anne was pinning a sheet into a kimono, so she 
could take off her dinner gown and still be proper, 
Dallas harked back to the robbery. 

“Anne put the collar on the table there,” he said. 
“There’s no mistake about that. I watched her do it, 
for I remember thinking it was the sole reminder I 
had that Consolidated Traction ever went above 
thirty-nine.” 

Max was looking around the room, examining 
the window-locks and whistling between his teeth. 
He was in disgrace with every one, for by that 
time it was light enough to see three reporters with 


II4 





IT ENDED WITH MR. HARBISON WRITING OUT A LOT OF SLIPS 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


cameras across the street waiting for enough sun 
to snap the house, and everybody knew that it was 
Max and his idiotic wager that had done it. He 
had made two or three conciliatory remarks, but no 
one would speak to him. His antics were so queer, 
| however, that we were all watching him, and when 
he had felt over the rug with his hands, and raised 
the edges, and tried to lift out the chair-seats, and 
had shaken out Dal’s shoes (he said people often hid 
things and then forgot about it), he made a propo- 
sition. 
“Tf you will take that infernal furnace from 
around my neck, [ll undertake either to find the 
jewels or to show up the thief,” he said quietly. And 
of course, with all the people in the house under sus- 
picion, every one had to hail the suggestion with 
joy, and to offer his assistance, and Jimmy had to 
take Max’s share of the furnace. So they took the 
scullery slip down-stairs to the policeman, and gave 
Jim Max’s share of the furnace. (Yes, I had broken 
the policeman to them gently. Of course, Anne said 
at once that he was the thief, but they found him 
116 


WE MAKE AN OMELET 


tucked'in and sound asleep with his back against the 
furnace. ) 

“In the first place,” Max said, standing impor- 
tantly in the middle of the room, “we retired be- 
tween two and three—nearer three. So the theft 
occurred between three and five, when Anne woke 
up. Was your door locked, Dal?” 

“No. The door into the hall was, but the door 
into the dressing-room was open, and we found the 
door from there into the hall open this morning.” 

“From three until five,’ Max repeated. “Was 
any one out of his room during that time?” 

“T was,” said Tom Harbison promptly, from the 
foot of the bed. “TI was prowling all around some- 
where about four, searching” —he glanced at me— 
“for a drink of water. But as J don’t know a pearl 
from a glass bead, I hope you exonerate me.” 

Everybody laughed and said, ‘‘Of course,” and 
“Sure, old man,” and changed the subject quickly. 
While that excitement was on, I got Jim to one side 
and told him about Bella. His good-natured face 


was radiant at first. 


117 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


“I suppose she did come to see Takahiro, eh, 
Kit?” he asked delicately. “She didn’t say any- 
thing about me?” 

“Nothing good. She said the house was in a dis- 
_ graceful condition,” I said heartlessly. “And her 
diamond bracelet was stolen while she took a nap 
on the kitchen table’”—he groaned—*“and—oh, Jim, 
you are such a goose! If I could only manage my 
own affairs the way I could my friends’! She’s too 
sure of you, Jimmy. She knows you adore her, and 
—how brutal could you be, Jim?” 

“Fair,” he said. “I may have undiscovered 
depths of brutality that I have never had occasion 
to use. However, I might try. Why?” 

“Listen, Jim,’ I urged. “It was always Bella 
who did things here: she managed the house, she 
tyrannized over her friends, and she bullied you. 
Yes, she did. Now she’s here, without your invita- 
tion, and she has to stay. It’s your turn to bully, 
to dictate terms, to be coldly civil or politely rude. 
Make her furious at you. If she is jealous, so much 
thie better 

118 


WE MAKE AN OMELET 


“How far would you sacrifice yourself on tie 
altar of friendship?” he asked. 

“You may pay me all the attention you like, in 
public,” I replied, and after we shook hands we went 
together to Bella. 

There was an ominous pause when we went into 
the den. Bella was sitting by the register, with her 
furs on, and after one glance over her shoulder at 
us, she looked away again without speaking. 

“Bella,” Jim said appealingly. And then I 
pinched his arm, and he drew himself up and looked 
properly outraged. 

“Bella,” he said, coldly this time, “T can’t imagine 
why you have put yourself in this ridiculous posi- 
tion, but since you have—” 

She turned on him in a fury. 

“Put myself in this position!’ She was frantic. 
“Tt’s a plot, a wretched trick of yours, this quaran- 
tine, to keep me here.” 

Jim gasped, but I gave him a warning glance, and 
he swallowed hard. 

“On the contrary, 


99 


he said, with maddening 
IIQ 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


quiet, “I would be the last person in the world to 
wish to perpetuate an indiscretion of yours. For 
it was hardly discreet, was it, to visit a bachelor 
establishment alone at ten o’clock at night? As 
far as my plotting to keep you here is concerned, I 
assure you that nothing could be further from my 
mind. Our paths were to be two parallel lines that 
never touch.” He looked at me for approval, and 
Bella was choking. 

“You are worse than I ever thought you,” she 
stormed. “I thought you were only a—a fool. 
Now I know you—for a brute!’ 

Well, it ended by Jim’s graciously permitting 
Bella to remain—there being nothing else to do— 
and by his magnanimously agreeing to keep her real 
identity from Aunt Selina and Mr. Harbison, and to 
break the news of her presence to Anne and the rest. 
It created a sensation beside which Anne’s pearls 
Maded away, although they came to the front again 
soon enough. | 

Jim broke the news at once, gathering every- 
body but Harbison and Aunt Selina in the upper 

120 


WE MAKE AN OMELET 


hall. He was palpitatingly nervous, but he tried to 
carry it off with a high hand. 

“Tt’s unfortunate,” he said, looking around the 
circle of faces, each one frozen with amazement, and 
just a suspicion, perhaps, of incredulity. “It’s par- 
ticularly unfortunate for her. You all know how 
high-strung she is, and if the papers should get hold 
of it—well, we'll all have to make it as easy as we 
can for her.” 

With Jim’s eye on them, they all swallowed the 
butler story without a gulp. But Anne was indig- 
nant. 

“It’s like Bella,’ she snapped. “Well, she has 
‘made her bed and she can lie on it. I’m sure I 
shan’t make it for her. But if you want to know my 
opinion, Mr. Harbison may be a fool, but you can’t 
ram two Bellas, both nee Knowles, down Miss Caru- 
thers’ throat with a stick.” 

We had not thought of that before and every one 
looked blank. Finally, however, Jim said Bella’s 
middle name was Constantia, and we decided to call . 
her that. But it turned out afterward that nobody 

121 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


could remember it in a hurry, and generally when we 
wanted to attract her attention, we walked across 
the room and touched her on the shoulder. It was 
quicker and safer. 

The name decided, we went down-stairs in a line 
to welcome Bella, to try to make her feel at home, 
and to forget her deplorable situation. .Leila had 
worked herself into a really sympathetic frame of 
mind. 


9 


“Poor dear,” she said, on the way down. “Now 
don’t grin, anybody, just be cordial and glad to see 
her. I hope she doesn’t cry: you know the spells 
she takes.” 

We stopped outside the door, and everybody tried 
to look cheerful and sympathetic and not grinny— 
which was as hard as looking as if we had had a cup 
of tea—and then Jim threw the door open and we 
filed in. 

Bella was comfortably reading by the fire. She 
had her feet up on a stool and a pillow behind her 
head. She did not even look at us for a minute; then 
she merely glanced up as she turned a page. 


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“I DON’T KNOW THAT I EVER SAW ONE,” HE SAID 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


“Dear me,” she said mockingly, “what a lot of 
frumps you all are! I had hoped it was some one 
‘with my breakfast.” 

Then she went on reading. As Leila said after- 
ward, that kind of person ought to be divorced. 

Aunt Selina came down just then and I left every- 
body trying to explain Bella’s presence to her, and 
fled to the kitchen. The Harbison man appeared 
while I was sitting hopelessly in front of the gas 
range, and showed me about it. 

“IT don’t know that I ever saw one,” he said cheer- 
fully, “but I know the theory. Likewise, by the 
same token, this tea-kettle, set on the flame, will 
boil. That is not theory, however. That is early. 
knowledge. ‘Polly, put the kettle on; we'll all take 
tea.’ Look at that, Mrs. Wilson. I didn’t fight 
bacilli with boiled water at Chickamauga for noth- 
ing. 

And ‘then he let out the policeman and brought — 


%? 


him into the kitchen. He was a large man, and his 


face was a curious mixture of amazement, alarm - 


and dignity. No doubt we did look queer, still in 
124 


WE MAKE AN OMELET 


parts of our evening clothes and I in the white silk 
and lace petticoat that belonged under my gown, 
with a yellow and black pajama coat of Jimmy’s 
as a sort of breakfast jacket. | 

“This is Officer Flannigan,’ Mr. Harbison said. 
“T explained our unfortunate position earlier in the 
morning, and he is prepared to accept our hospital- 
ity. Flannigan, every person in this house has got 
to work, as I also explained to you. You are ap- 
pointed dish-washer and scullery-maid.” 

The policeman looked dazed. Then, slowly, like 
dawn over a sleeping lake, a light of comprehension 
grew in his face. 

“Sure,” he said, laying his helmet on the table. 
“T’ll be glad to be doing anything I can to help. Me 
and Mrs. Wilson—we used to be friends. It’s many 
the time I’ve opened the carriage door for her, and 
she with her head in the air, and for all that, the 
pleasant smile. When any one around her was hav-' 
ing a party and wanted a special officer, it was Mrs. 
Wilson that always said, ‘Get Flannigan, Officer 
Timothy Flannigan. He’s your man.’ ” 

125 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


My heart had been going lower and lower. So 
he knew Bella, and he knew I was not Bella, al- 
though he had not grasped the fact that I was usurp- 
ing her place. And the odious Harbison man sat 
on the table and swung his feet. 

“T wonder if you know,” he said, looking around 
him, “how good it is to see a white woman so per- 
fectly at home in a civilized kitchen again, after two 
years of food cooked by a filthy Indian squaw over 
a portable sheet-iron stove!” 

So perfectly at home! I stood in the middle of 
the room and stared around at the copper things 
hanging up and the rows of blue and white crock- 
ery, and the dozens and hundreds of complicated- 
looking utensils, whose names I had never even 
heard, and I was dazed. I tried with some show of 
authority to instruct Flannigan about gathering up 
the soiled things, and, after listening in puzzled si- 
lence for a minute, he stripped off his blue coat with 
a tolerant smile. 

“Lave ’em to me, miss,” he said. The “miss” 
passed unnoticed. “I mayn’t give ’em a Turkish 

126 


WE MAKE AN OMELET 


bath, which is what you are describin’, but I’ll get 
the grease off all right. I always clean up while the 
missus is in bed with a young ’un.” 

He rolled up his sleeves, found a brown checked 
gingham apron behind the door, and tied it around 
his neck with the ease of practice. Then he cleared 
off the plates, eating what appealed to him as he did 
so, and stopping now and again for a deep-throated 
chuckle. 

“T’m thinkin’,’ he said once, stopping with a 
dish in the air, ‘‘what a deuce of a noise there will be 
when the vaccination doctor comes around this 
mornin’. In a week every one of us will be. nursin’ 
a sore arrm or walkin’ on one leg, beggin’ your par- 
don, miss. The last time the force was vaccinated, 
I asked to be done behind me ear; I needed me legs 
and I needed me arrms, but didn’t need me head 
much!’ 

He threw his head back and laughed. Mr. Har- 
bison laughed too. Oh, we were very cheerful! 
And that awful stove stared at me, and the kettle 
began to hum, and Aunt Selina sent down word 

127 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


that she was not well, and would like some omelet 
on her tray. Omelet! 

I knew that it was made of eggs, but that was the 
extent of my knowledge. I muttered an excuse and 
_ ran up-stairs to Anne, but she was still sniffling over 
her necklace, and said she didn’t know anything 
about omelets and didn’t care. Food would choke 
her. Neither of the Mercer girls knew either, and 
Bella, who was still reading in the den, absolutely 
declined to help. 

“T don’t know, and I wouldn’t tell you if I did. 
You can get yourself out, as you got yourself in,” 
she said nastily. “The simplest thing, if you don’t 
mind my suggesting it, is to poison the coffee and 
kill the lot of us. Only, if you decide to do it, let 
me know; I want to live just long enough to see 
Jimmy Wilson writhe!’ 

Bella is the kind of person who gets on one’s 
nerves. She finds a grievance arid hugs it; she does 
ridiculous things and blames other people. And 
she flirts. 

I went down-stairs despondently, and found that 


128 


\ 


WE MAKE AN OMELET 


Mr. Harbison had discovered some eggs and was 

standing helplessly staring at them. 
 “Omelet—eggs. Eggs—omelet. That’s the ex- 
tent of my knowledge,” he said, when I entered. 
“You'll have to come to my assistance.” 

It was then that I saw the cook-book. It was 
lying on a shelf beside the clock, and while Mr. 
Harbison had his back turned I got it down. It 
was quite clear that the domestic type of woman 
was his ideal, and I did not care to outrage his be- 
lief in me. So I took the cook-book into the pan- 
try and read the recipe over three times. When I 
came back I knew it by heart, although I did not 
understand it. | 

“T will tell you how,” I said with a great deal of 
dignity, “and since you want to help, you may make 
it yourself.” 

He was delighted. 

“Fine!” he said. “Suppose you give me the idea 
first. Then we'll go over it slowly, bit by bit. We'll 
make a big fluffy omelet, and if the others aren’t 
around, we'll eat it ourselves.” 


129 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


“Well,” I said, trying to remember exactly, “you 
take two eggs—” 

“Two!” he repeated. “Two eggs for ten people!’ 

“Don’t interrupt me,” I said irritably. “If—if 
two isn’t enough we can make several omelets, one 
after the other.” ? 

He looked at me with admiration. 

“Who else but you would have thought of that!” 
he remarked. “Well, here are two eggs. What 
next P” 

“Separate them,” I said easily. No, I didn’t 
know what it meant. I hoped he would; I said it 
as casually as I could, and I did not look at him, I 
knew he was staring at me, puzzled. 

“Separate them!” he said. ‘Why, they aren’t 
fastened together!’ Then he laughed. “Oh, yes, 
of course!’ When I looked he had put one at each 
end of the table. “Afraid they'll quarrel, I sup- 
pose,” he said. ‘Well, now they’re separated.” 

“Then beat.” | 

“First separate, then beat!” he repeated. “The 
author of that cook-book must have had a mean dis- _ 


130 


WE MAKE AN OMELET 


position. What’s next? Hang them?’ He looked 
up at me with his boyish smile. 

“Separate and beat,” I repeated. If I lost a word 
of that recipe I was gone. It was like saying the 
alphabet: I had to go to the beginning every time, 
mentally. 

“Well,” he reflected, “you can’t beat an egg, no 
matter how cruel you may be, unless you break it 
first.” He picked up an egg and looked at it. “Sepa- 
rate!’ he reflected. “Ah—the white from the— 
whatever you cooking experts call it—the yellow 
part 

“Exactly!” I exclaimed, light breaking on me. 


29 
e 


“Of course. I knew you would find it out.” Then 
back to the recipe—“‘beat until well mixed; then fold 
in the whites.” , 

“Fold?” he questioned. “It looks pretty thin to 
fold, doesn’t it? JI—upon my word, I never heard 
of folding an egg. Are you—but of course you 
know. Please come and show me how.” 

“Just fold them in,” I said desperately. “It—it 
isn’t difficult.” And because I was so transparent 


31 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


a fraud and knew he must find me out then, I said 
something about butter, and went into the pantry. 
That’s the trouble with a lie: somebody asks you 
to tell one as a favor to somebody else, and the 
first thing you know, you are having to tell a thou- 
sand, and trying to remember the ones you have told 
so you won't contradict yourself, and the very person 
you have tried to help turns on you and reproaches 
you for being untruthful! I leaned my elbows de- 
spondently on the shelf of the kitchen pantry, with 
the feet of a guard visible through the high win- 
dow over my head, and waited for Mr. Harbison 
to come in and demand that I fold a raw egg, and 
discover that I didn’t know anything about cooking, 
and was just as useless as all the others. 

He came. He held the bowl out to me and waved 
a fork in triumph. 

“T have solved it,” he said. “Or, rather, Flanni- 
gan and I have solved it. The mixture awaits the 
magic touch of the cook.” 

I honestly thought I could do the rest. It was 
only to be put in a pan and browned, and then in 


Urge 


WE MAKE AN OMELET 


the oven three minutes. And I did it properly, but 
for two things: I should have greased the pan (but 
this was the book’s fault ; it didn’t say) and I should 
have lighted the oven. The latter, however, was 
Mr. Harbison’s fault as much as mine, and I had 
wit enough to lay it to absent-mindedness on the 
part of both of us. | 

After that, Aunt Selina or no Aunt Selina, we 
decided to have boiled eggs, and Mr. Harbison 
knew how to cook them. He put them in the tea- 
kettle and then went to look at the furnace. And 
Officer Timothy Flannigan ground the coffee and 
gave his opinion of the board of health in no stinted 
terms. As for me, I burned my fingers and the 
toast, and felt myself growing hot and cold, for I 
was going to be found out as soon as Flannigan 
grasped the situation. 

Then, of course, I did the thing that caused me 
‘so much trouble later. I put down the toaster—at 
least the Harbison man said it was a toaster—and 
went over and stood in front of the policeman. 


“T don’t suppose you will understand—exactly,” 
133 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


I said, “but—but if anything occurs to—to make 
you think I am not—that things are not what they 
seem to be—I mean, what I say they are—you will 
understand that it is a joke, won’t you? A joke, 
you know.” 

Yes, that was what I said. I know it sounds like 
a raving delirium, but when Max came down and 
squizzled some bacon; as he said, and told Flannigan 
about the robbery, and how, whether it was a joke 
or deadly earnest, somebody in the house had taken 
Anne’s pearls, that wretched policeman winked at 
me solemnly over Max’s shoulder. Oh, it was 
awful! 

And, to add to my discomfort, the most unpleas- 
ant ideas would obtrude themselves. [hat was Mr. 
Harbison doing on the first floor of the house that 
night? Ice water, he had said. But there had been 
plenty of water in the studio! And he had told me 
it was the furnace. 

Mr. Harbison came back in a half-hour, and I re- 
membered the eggs. We fished them out of the tea- 
kettle, and they were perfectly hard, but we ate them. 


134 


WE MAKE AN OMELET 


The doctor from the board of health came that 
morning and vaccinated us. There was a great deal 
of excitement, and Aunt Selina was done on the 
arm. As she did not affect evening clothes this was 
entirely natural, but later on in the week, when the 
wretched things began to take, nobody dared to 
limp, and Leila made a terrible break by wearing a 
bandage on her left arm, after telling Aunt Selina 
she had been vaccinated on the right. | 


135 


CHAPTER VIII 


CORRESPONDENTS DEPARTMENT 


in the house post-box after the 
lifting of the quarantine, and 
later were presented to me by 
their writers, bound in white 
kid (the letters, not the au- 


thors, of course). 





From Thomas Harbison, late 
Engineer of Bridges, Peruvian 
Trunk Lines, South America, to Henry Llewellyn, 
care of Union Nitrate Company, Iquique, Chili. . 


DEAR OLD MAN: 

_ I think I was fully a week trying to drive out of 

my mind my last glimpse of you with your sickly 

grin, pretending to be tickled to pieces that the only 
136 


CORRESPONDENTS’ DEPARTMENT 


white man within two hundred miles of your shack 
Was going on a holiday. You old bluffer! I used 
to hang over the rail of the steamer, on the way up, 
and see you standing as I left you beside the car 
with its mule and the Indian driver, and behind you 
a million miles of soul-destroying pampa. Never 
mind, Jack; I sent yesterday by mail steamer the 
cigarettes, pipes and tobacco, canned goods and 
poker chips. Put in some magazines, too, and the 
collars. Don’t know about the ties—guess it won’t 
matter down there. — | 

Nothing happened on the trip. One of the en- 
gines broke down three days out, and I spent all my 
time below-decks for forty-eight hours. Chief en- 
gineer raving with D. T.’s. Got the engine fixed in 
record time, and haven’t got my hands clean yet. 
It was bully. 

With this I send the papers, which will tell you 
how I happen to be here, and why I have leisure to 
write you three days after landing. If the situation 
were not so ridiculous, it would be. maddening. 


Here I am, off for a holiday and congratulating 


137 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


myself that I am foot free and heart free—yes, my 
friend, heart free—here I am, shut in the house of 
a man I never saw until last night, and wouldn’t 
care if J never saw again, with a lot of people who 
never heard of me, who are almost equally vague 
about South America, who play as hard at bridge 
as I ever worked at building one (forgive this, won’t 
you? the novelty has gone to my head), and who 
belong to the very class of extravagant, luxury- 
loving, non-producing parasites (isn’t that what we 
called them?) that you and I used to revile from our 
lofty Andean pinnacle. 

To come down to earth: here we are, six women 
and five men, including a policeman, not a servant 
in the house, and no one who knows how to do any- 
thing. They are really immensely interesting, these 
people: they all know each other very well, and it is 
“Jimmy” here, and “Dal” there—Dallas Brown, 

‘who went to India with me; you remember my 

speaking of him—and they are good-natured, too, 

except at meal times. The little hostess, Mrs. Wil- 

son, took over the cooking, and although luncheon 
138 





THIS WOULD-BE ARTIST, WILSON 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


was better than breakfast, the food still leaves much 
to the imagination. 

I wish you could see this Mrs. Wilson, Hal. You 
would change a whole lot of your ideas. She is a 
thoroughbred, sure enough, and of course some of 
-her beauty is the result of the exquisite care about 
which you and I—still from our Andean pinnacle— 
used to rant. But the fact is, she is more than that. 
She has fire, and pluck, no end. If you could have 
seen her this morning, standing in front of a cold 
kitchen range, determined to conquer it, and had 
seen the tilt of her chin when I offered to take over 
the cooking—you needn’t grin; I can cook, and you 
know it—you would understand what I mean. It 
was so clear that she was paralyzed with fright at 
the idea of getting breakfast, and equally clear that 
she meant to do it. By the way, I have learned that 
her name was McNair before she married this 
would-be artist, Wilson, and that she is a daughter 
of the McNair who financed the Callao branch! 

I have not met the others so intimately. There 
are two sisters named Mercer, inclined to be noisy 

140 


CORRESPONDENTS’ DEPARTMENT 


—they are playing roulette in the next room now. 
One is small and dark, almost Hebraic in type, 
named Leila and called Lollie. The other, larger, 
very bionde and languishing, and with a decided 
preference for masculine society, even, saving the 
mark, mine! Dallas Brown’s wife, good looking, 
smokes cigarettes when I am not around—they all 
do, except Mrs. Wilson. Then there is a maiden 
aunt, who is ill to-day with grippe and excitement, 
and a Miss Knowles, who came for a moment last 
night to see Mrs. Wilson, was caught in the quar- 
antine (see papers), and, after hiding all night in 
the basement, is sulking all day in her room. Her 
presence created an excitement out of all proportion 
to the apparent cause. 

From the fact that I have reason to know that 
my artist host and his beautiful wife are on bad 
terms, and from the significant glances with which 
the announcement of Miss Knowles’ presence was 
met, the state of affairs seems rather clear. Wilson 
impresses me as a spineless sort, anyhow, and when 


the lady of the basement shut herself away from 
Id] 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


the rest to-day and I happened on “Jimmy,” as they 
call him, pleading with her through the door, I very 
nearly kicked him down the stairs. Oh, yes, Vl 
keep out, right enough; it isn’t my affair. 

By the way, after quarantine and with the police- 
man locked in the furnace-room, a pearl necklace 
and a diamond bracelet were stolen! Just ten of 
us to divide the suspicion! Upon my word, Hal, 
it’s the queerest situation I ever heard of. Which 
of us did it? I make a guess that not a few of us 
are fools, but which is the knave? The worst of it 
is, I am the only unaccredited member of the house- 
hold! 

This is more scandal than I ever wrote in my life. 
Lay it to circumscribed environment, and the lack 
of twenty miles over the pampa before breakfast. 
We have all been vaccinated, and the officious gen- 
tlemen from the board of health have taken their 
grins and their formaldehyde and gone. Ye gods, 
how we cough! 

- The Carlton order will go through all right, I 
think. ’Phoned him this morning. If it does, old 
142 


CORRESPONDENTS’ DEPARTMENT 


man, we will take a month in September and ex- 
plore the Mercator property. 

Do you know, Hal, I have been thinking lately 
that you and I stick too close to the grind. Busi- 
ness is right enough, but what’s the use of spend- 
ing one’s best years succeeding in everything except 
the things that are worth while? Il be thirty 
sooner than I care to say, and—oh, well, you won’t 
understand. You'll sit down there, with the South- 
ern Cross and the rest of the infernal astronomical 
galaxy looking down on you, and the Indians chant- 
ing in the village, and you will think I have grown 
sentimental. I have not. You and I down there 
have been looking at the world through the reverse 
end of the glass. It’s a bully old world, Hal, and 
this is God’s part of it. 

Burn this letter after you read it: I suspect it is 
covered with germs, Well, happy days, old man. 


Yours, Tou 


P. S. By the way, can’t you spare some of the 
- Indian pottery you picked up at Callao? I told Mrs. 


143 





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CORRESPONDENTS’ DEPARTMENT 


Wilson about it, and she was immensely interested. 
Send it to this address. Can you get it to the next 


steamer ?—T. 


From Maxwell Reed to Richard Burton Bagley, 
University Club, New York. 


Dear Dick: 
- Enclosed find my check for five hundred, as -per 
wager. Possibly you were within your rights in 
protecting your bet in the manner you chose, but 
while I do not wish to be offensive, your reporters 
are damnably so. Yours, 

MAXWELL REED. 


From Officer Flannigan to Mrs. Maggie Flanni- 
gan, Erin Street. 


DEAR MAGGIE: 
As soon as you receive this, go down to Mac and 
tell him the story as I tell you hear. Tell him I | 
was walkin my beat, and I’d been afther seein 
Jimmy Alverini about doin the right thing for Mac 
on Monday, at the poles, when I seen a man hangin’ 


145 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


suspicious around this house, which is Mr. Wilson’s, 
on Ninety-fifth. And, of coorse, afther chasin the 
man a mile or more, I lose him, which was not my 
fault. So I go back to the Wilson house, and tell 
them to be careful about closin up fer the night, 
and while I’m standin in the hall, with all the swells 
around me, sparklin with jewels, the board of health 
sends a man to lock us all in, because the Jap thats 
been waiter has took the smallpox and gone to the 
hospitle. I stood me ground. I sez, sez I, you cant 
shtop an officer in pursute of his duty. I rafuse to 
be shut in. Be shure to tell Mac that. | 

So here I am, and like to be for a month. Tell 
Mac theres four votes shut up here, and I can get 
them for him, if he can stop this monkey business. 

Then go over to the Dago Church on Webster 
Avenue and put a dollar in Saint Anthony’s box. 
He'll see me out of this scrape, right enough. Do 
it at once. Now remember, go to Mac first: may 
be you can get the dollar from him, and mind what 
you tell him. Your husband, 

Tim FLANNIGAN. 
146 


CORRESPONDENTS’ DEPARTMENT 


From me to mother—Mrs. Theodore McNair, 
Hotel Hamilton, Bermuda. 

DEAREST MOTHER: ? 

I hope you will get this before you read the pa- 
pers, and when you do read them, you are not to get 
excited and worried. I am as well as can be, and a 
great deal safer than I ever remember to have been 
in my life. We are quarantined, a lot of us, in Jim 
Wilson’s house, because his irreproachable Jap did 
a very reproachable thing—took smallpox. Now 
read on before you get excited. His room has been 
fumigated, and we have been vaccinated. I am well 

and happy. I can’t be killed in a railway wreck or 

smashed when the car skids. Unless I drown myself 
in my bath, or jump through a window, positively 
nothing can happen to me. So gather up all your 
maternal anxieties and cast them to the Bermuda 
sharks, 

Anne Brown is here—see the papers for list—and 
if she can not play propriety, Jimmy’s Aunt Selina 
can. In fact, she doesn’t play at it; she works. I 


have telephoned Lizette for some clothes—enough 
147 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


for a couple of weeks, although Dallas promises to 
get us out sooner. Now, dear, do go ahead and have 
a nice time, and on no account come home. You 
could only have the carriage to stop in front of the 
house, and wave to me through a window. 

Mother, I want you to do something forme. You 
know who is down there, and—this is awfully deli- 
cate, Mumsy—but he’s a nice boy, and I thought 
I liked him. I guess you know he has been rather 
attentive. Now, I do like him, Mumsy, but not the 
way I thought I did, and I want you to—very gently, 
of course—to discourage him a little. You know 
how I mean. He’s a dear boy, but I am so tired of 
people who don’t know anything but horses and 
motors. 

And, oh, yes,—do you remember a girl named 
Lucille Mellon who was at school with you in 
Rome? And that she married a man named Harbi- 
son? Well, her son is here! He builds railroads 
and bridges and things, and he even built himself 
an automobile down in South America, because he 


148 


CORRESPONDENTS’ DEPARTMENT 


couldn’t afford to buy one, and burned wood in it! 
Wood! Think of it! 

, I wired father in Chicago for fear he would come 
rushing home. The picture in the paper of the face 
at the basement window is supposed to be Mr. Har- 
bison, but of course it isn’t any more like him than 
mine is like me. 

Anne Brown mislaid her pearl collar when she 
took it off last night, and has fussed herself into a 
sick headache. She declares it was stolen! Some 
of the people are playing bridge, Betty Mercer is do- 
ing a cake-walk to the Rhapsodie Hongroise—Jim 
has no every-day music—and the telephone is ring- 
ing. We have received enough flowers for a funeral 
—somebody sent Lollie a Gates Ajar, only with the 
gates shut. 

_ There are no servants—think of it, Mumsy. I 
wish you had made me learn to cook. Mr. Harbison 
has shown me a little—he was a soldier in the Span- 
ish War—but we girls are a terribly ignorant lot, 


‘Mumsy, about the real things of life. 
149 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


Now, don’t worry. It is more sport than camping 
in the Adirondacks, and not nearly so damp. 
Your loving daughter, 
KATHERINE. 


P. S.—South America must be wonderful. Why 
can’t we put the Gadfly in commission, and take a 
coasting trip this summer? It is a shame to own a 
yacht and never use it. K. 

This note, evidently delivered by messenger, was 
found among other litter in the vestibule after the 


lifting of the quarantine. 


Mr. Alex. Dodds, City Editor, Mail and Star: 
Dear D.—Can’t get a picture. Have waited 


seven hours. They have closed the shutters. 
McCorp. 


Written on the back of the above note. 


Watch the roof. Dopps. 


150 


CHAPTER IX 







FLANNIGAN’S FIND 


~. THE most charitable thing would 
M\\ be to say nothing about the first 
,’ day. We were baldly brutal— 
= that’s the only word for it. And 
= aga Mr. Harbison, with his beautiful cour- 
tesy—the really sincere kind—tried to patch up one 
quarrel after another and failed. He rose superbly 
to the occasion, and made something that he called a 
South American goulash for luncheon, although it 
was too salty, and every one was thirsty the rest of 
the day. 

Bella was horrid, of course. She froze Jim until 
he said he was going to sit in the refrigerator and 
cool the butter. She locked herself in the dressing- 
room—it had been assigned to me, but that made no 
difference -o Bella—and did her nails, and took three 


i 151 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


different baths, and refused te come to the table. 
And of course Jimmy was wild, and said she would 
starve. But I said, “Very well, let her starve. Not 
a tray shall leave my kitchen.” It was a comfort to 
have her shut up there anyhow: it postponed the 
time when she would come face to face with Flan- 
nigan. 

Aunt Selina got sick that day, as I have said. I 
was not so bitter as the others; I did not say that I 
wished she would die. The worst I ever wished her 
was that she might be quite ill for some time, and 
yet, when she began to recover, she was dreadful to 
me. She said for one thing, that it was the hard- 
Boiled eggs and the state of the house that did it, 
and when I said that the grippe was a germ, she re- 
torted that I had probably brought it to her on my 
clothing. 

You remember that Betty had drawn the nurse’s 
‘slip, and how pleased she had been about it. She 
got up early the morning of the first day and made 
herself a lawn cap and telephoned out for a white 
nurse’s uniform—that is, of course, for a white uni- 


152 


FLANNIGAN’S FIND 


form for a nurse. She really looked very fetching, 
and she went around all the morning with a red 
cross on her sleeve and a Saint Cecilia expression, 
gathering up bottles of medicine—most of it flesh 
reducer, which was pathetic, and closing windows 
for fear of drafts. She refused to help with the 
house-work, and looked quite exalted, but by after- 
noon it had palled on her somewhat, and she and 
Max shook dice. 

Betty was really pleased when Aunt Selina sent 
for her. She took in a bottle of cologne to bathe 
her brow, and we all stood outside the door and lis- 
tened. Betty tiptoed in in her pretty cap and apron, 
and wé heard her cautiously draw down the shades. 

“What are you doing that for?” Aunt Selina de- 
manded. “TI like the light.” 

“It’s bad for your poor eyes,” Betty’s tone was 
exactly the proper bedside pitch, low and sugary. 

“Sweet and low, sweet and low, wind of thel 
western sea!’ ’’ Dal hummed outside. 


39 
! 


“Put up those window-shades!’ Aunt Selina’s 


voice was strong enough. “What’s in that bottle?” 
153 3 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


Betty was still mild. She swished to the window 
and raised the shade. 

“Tm so sorry you are ill,” she said sympathetic- 
ally. “This is for your poor aching head. Now close 
_ your eyes and lie perfectly still, and I will cool your 
forehead.” 

“There’s nothing the matter with my head,” Aunt 
Selina retorted. “And I have not lost my faculties; 
I am not a child or a sick cow. If that’s perfumery, 
take it out.” 

We heard Betty coming to the door, but there was 
no fime to get away. She had dropped her mask 
for a minute and was biting her lip, but when she 
saw us she forced a smile. 

“She’s ill, poor dear,” she said. “If you people 
will go away, I can bring her around all right. In 
two hours she will eat out of my hand.” 

“Eat a piece out of your hand,” Max scoffed in a 
whisper. 

We waited a little longer, but it was too painful. 
Aunt Selina demanded a mustard foot bath and a 
hot lemonade and her back rubbed with liniment and 


154 


FLANNIGAN’S FIND 


some strong black tea. And in the intervals she 
wanted to be read to out of the prayer-book. And 
when we had all gone away, there came the most 
terrible noise from Aunt Selina’s room, and every 
one ran. We found Betty in the hall outside the _ 
door, crying, with her fingers in her ears and her 
cap over her eye. She said she had been putting the 
hot-water bottle to Aunt Selina’s back, and it had 
been too hot. Just then something hit against the 
door with a soft thud, fell to the floor and burst, 
for a trickle of hot water came over the sill. 

“She won’t let me hold her hand,” Betty wailed, 
“or bathe her brow, or smooth her pillow. She 
thinks of nothing but her stomach or her back! And 
when I try to make her bed look decent, she spits at 
me like a cat. Everything I do is wrong. She 
spilled the foot-bath into her shoes, and blamed me 
for it.” 

It took the united efforts of all of us—except 
Bella, who stood back and smiled nastily—to get 
Betty back into the sick-room again. I was su- 
premely thankful by that time that I had not drawn 


155 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


the nurse’s slip. ‘With dinner ordered in from one of 
the clubs, and the omelet ten hours behind me, my 
position did not seem so unbearable. But a new 
development was coming. 

While Betty was fussing with Aunt Selina, Max 
led a search of the house. He said the necklace and 
the bracelet must be hidden somewhere, and that no 
crevice was too small to neglect. | 

We made a formal search all together, except 
Betty and Aunt Selina, and we found a lot of things 
in different places that Jim said had been missing 
since the year one. But no jewels—nothing even 
suggesting a jewel was found. We had explored 
the entire house, every cupboard, every chest, even 
the insides of the couches and the pockets of Jim’s 
clothes—which he resented bitterly—and found 
nothing, and I must say the situation was growing 
rather strained. Some one had taken the jewels; 
they hadn’t walked away. | 

It was Flannigan who suggested the roof, and as 
we had tried every place else, we climbed there. Of 
course we didn’t find anything, but after all day in 

156 


Oo0Co0 














JIMMY WAS SITTING ON THE ROOF PLAYING CANFIELD 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


the house with the shutters closed on account of re- 
porters, the air was glorious. It was February, but 
quite mild and sunny, and we could look down over 
Riverside Drive and the Hudson, and even recognize 
preple we knew on horseback and in cars. It was a 
pathetic joy, and we lined up along the parapet and 
watched the motor-boats racing on the river, and 
tried to feel that we were in the world as well as 
of it, but it was very hard. 

Betty had been making tea for Aunt Selina and 
of course when she heard us up there, she followed, 
tray and all, and we drank Aunt Selina’s tea and had 
the first really nice time of the day. Bella had come 
up, too, but she was still standoffish and queer, and 
she stood leaning against a chimney and staring out. 
over the river. After a little Mr. Harbison put 
down his cup and went over to her, and they talked 
quite confidentially for a long time. I thought it 
bad taste in Bella, under the circumstances, after 
snubbing Dallas and Max, and of course treating 
Jim like the dirt under her feet, to turn right around 
and be lovely to Mr. Harbison. It was hard for Jim, 

. 158 


FLANNIGAN’S FIND 


Max came and sat beside me, and Flannigan, who 
had been sent down for more cups, passed tea, put- 
ting the tray on top of the chimney. Jim was sitting 
grumpily on the roof, with his feet folded under 
hin, playing Canfield in the shadow of the parapet, 
buying the deck out of one pocket and putting his 
winnings in the other. He was watching Bella, 
too, and she knew it, and she strained a point to cap- 
tivate Mr. Harbison. Any one could see that. 

And that was the picture that came out in the next 
morning’s papers, tea-cups, cards and all. For when 
some one looked up, there were four newspaper pho- 
tographers on the roof of the next house, and they 
had the impertinence to thank us! 

Flannigan had seen Bella by that time, but as he 
still didn’t understand the situation, things were just 
the same. But his manner to me puzzled me; when- 
ever he came near me he winked prodigiously, and 
during all the search he kept one eye on me, and 
seemed to be amused about something. 

When the rest had gone down to dress for dinner, 
which was being sent in, thank goodness, I still sat 


159 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


on the parapet and watched the darkening river. I 
felt terribly lonely, all at once, and sad. There 
wasn’t any one any nearer than father, in the West, 
or mother in Bermuda, who really cared a rap 
_ whether I sat on that parapet all night or not, or 
who would be sorry if I leaped to the dirty bricks of 
the next door-yard—not that I meant to, of course. 

The lights came out across the river, and made 
purple and yellow streaks on the water, and one of 
the motor-boats came panting back to the yacht 
club, coughing and gasping as if it had overdone. 
Down on the street automobiles were starting and 
stopping, cabs rolling, doors slamming, all the mad- 
dening, delightful bustle of people who are foot- 
free to dine out, to dance, to go to the theater, to 
do any of the thousand possibilities of a long Febru- 
ary evening. And above them I sat on the roof and 
cried. Yes, cried. 

I was roused by some one coughing just behind 
me, and [ tried to straighten my face before I 
turned. It was Flannigan, his double row of brass 
buttons gleaming in the twilight. 

160 


FLANNIGAN’S FIND 


“Excuse me, miss,” he said affably, “but the boy 
from the hotel has left the dinner on the doorstep 
and run, the cowardly little divil! What’ll I do with 
it? I went to Mrs. Wilson, but she says it’s no 
concern of hers.” Flannigan was evidently bewil- 
dered. | 

“You'd better keep it warm, Flannigan,” I re- 
plied. “You needn’t wait; I’m coming.” But he 
did not go. 

“lfi—if you’ll excuse me, miss,” he said, “don’t 
you think ye’d betther tell them?” 

“Tell them what ?” 

“The whole thing—the joke,” he said confiden- 
tially, coming closer. “It’s been great sport, now, 
hasn't it? But I’m afraid they will get on to it soon, 
and—some of them might not be agreeable. A pearl 
necklace is a pearl necklace, miss, and the lady’s 
wild.” 

“What do you mean?’ J gasped. “You don’t 
think—why, Flannigan—” 

He merely grinned at me and thrust his hand 
down in his pocket. When he brought it up he had 

161 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


Bella’s bracelet on his palm, glittering in the faint 
light. 

“Where did you get it?” Between relief and the 
absurdity of the thing, I was almost hysterical. But 
Flannigan did not give me the bracelet; instead, it 
struck me his tone was suddenly severe. 

“Now look here, miss,” he said: “you’ve played 
your trick, and you’ve had your fun. The Lord 
knows it’s only folks like you would play April fool 
jokes with a fortune! If you’re the sinsible little 
woman you look to be, you'll put that pearl collar on 
the coal in the basement to-night, and let me find it.” 

“T haven’t got the pearl collar,’ I protested. “I 
think you are crazy. Where did you get that brace- 
let?” 

He edged away from me, as if he expected me to 
snatch it from him and run, but he was still trying 
in an elephantine way to treat the matter as a joke. 

“T found it in a drawer in the pantry,” he said, 
“among the dirty linen. And if you’re as smart as 
I think you are, I’ll find the pearl collar there in the 
morning—and nothing said, miss.” 

162 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


So there I was, suspected of being responsible for 
Anne’s pearl collar, as if I had not enough to worry 
me before. Of course I could have called them all 
together and told them, and made them explain to 
Flannigan what I had really meant by my delirious 
speech in the kitchen. But that would have meant 
telling the whole ridiculous story to Mr. Harbison, 
and having him think us all mad, and me a fool. 

In all that overcrowded house there was only one 
place where I could be miserable with comfort. Soa 
I stayed on the roof, and cried a little and then be- 
came angry and walked up and down, and clenched 
my hands and babbled helplessly. The boats on the 
river were yellow, horizontal streaks through my 
tears, and an early searchlight sent its shaft like a 
tangible thing in the darkness, just over my head. 
Then, finally, I curled down in a corner with my 
arms on the parapet, and the lights became more and 
more prismatic and finally formed themselves into a 
circle that was Bella’s bracelet, and that kept whirl- 
ing around and around on something flat and not 
over-clean, that was Flannigan’s palm. 

conn 





Lan WA 
{oe 





CHAPTER X 
ON THE STAIRS 


I WAS roused by some one walking 


across the soof, the cracking of tin 







under feet, and a comfortable and com- 


Ai panionable odor of tobacco. I moved a 





fi 
S Ly 
S a f 
f 
. 
Up-srd ws a | 
sa uN 
! 
ft - 
h 


which man. And just at that instant he saw me. 

“Good Lord!” he ejaculated, and throwing 
his cigar away he carne across Guickly. “Why. Mrs. 
Wilson, what in the world are you doing here? [ 
7 thought—they said—” 

“That I was sulking again?” I finished disagree- 
ably. “Perhaps I am, In fact, I’m quite sure of it.” 

“You are not,” he said severely. ‘‘You have been 
asleep in a February night, in the open air, with less 
clothing on than I wear in the tropics.” 

I had got up by this time, refusing his help, and 
165 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


because my feet were numb, I sat down on the para- 
pet fora moment. Oh, I knew what I looked like— 
one of those ‘“Valley-of-the-Nile-After-a-Flood” 
pictures. 

“There is one thing about you that is comfort- 
ing,’ I sniffed. ‘You said precisely the same thing 
to me at three o’clock this morning. You never 
startle me by saying anything unexpected.” 

He took a step toward me, and even in the dusk 
I could see that he was looking down at me oddly. 
All my bravado faded away and there was a queer- 
ish ringing in my ears. 

“T would like to!’ he said tensely. “I would like, 
this minute—I’m a fool, Mrs. Wilson,” he finished 
miserably. “TI ought to be drawn and quartered, but 
when I see you like this I—I get crazy. If you say 
the word, P1—I’ll go down and—” He clenched 
his fist. : | 

It was reprehensible, of course; he saw that in an 
instant, for he shut his teeth over something tha! 
sounded very fierce, and strode away from me, to 
stand looking out over the river, with his hands 

166 


ON OTHE SFATRS 


thrust in his pockets. Of course the thing I should 
have done was to ignore what he had said altogether, 
but he was so uncomfortable, so chastened, that, 
feline, feminine, whatever the instinct is, I could not 
let him go. I had been so wretched myself. 

“What is it you would like to say?” I called over 
to him. He did not speak. “Would you tell me that 
Tama silly child for pouting?’ No reply; he struck 
amatch. “Or would you preach a nice little sermon 
about people—about women—loving their hus- 
bands?” 

He grunted savagely under his breath. | 

“Be quite honest,” I pursued relentlessly. “Say 
that we are a lot of barbarians, say that because my 
—because Jimmy treats me outrageously—oh, he 
does; any one can see that—and because I loathe 
him—and any one can tell that—why don’t you say 
you are shocked to the depthsr” I was a little 
shocked myself by that time, but I couldn’t stop, 
having started. 

He came over to me, white-faced and towering, 
and he had the audacity to grip my arm and stand 
167 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


me on my feet, like a bad child—which I was, I dare 
say. 

“Don’t!” he said in a husky, very pained voice. 
“You are only talking: you don’t mean it. It isn’t 
you. You know you care, or else why aré you cry- 
ing up here? And don’t do it again, dont do tt 
again—or I will—” 

“You will—what ?” 

“Make a fool of myself, as J have now,” he fin- 
ished grimly. And then he stalked away and left 
me there alone, completely bewildered, to find my 
way down in the dark. 

I groped along, holding to the rail, for the stair- 
case to the roof was very steep, and I went slowly. 
Half-way down the stairs there was a tiny landing, 
and I stopped. I could have sworn I heard Mr. 
Harbison’s footsteps far below, growing fainter. I 
even smiled a little, there in the dark, although I had 
been rather profoundly shaken. The next instant I 
knew I had been wrong; some one was on the land- 
ing with me. I could hear short, sharp breathing, 
and then— | 

168 


ON ViHE STAIRS 


I am not sure that I struggled; in fact, I don’t be- 
lieve I did—I was too limp with amazement, The 
creature, to have lain in wait for me like that! And 
he was brutally strong: he caught me to him fiercely, 
and held me there, close, and he kissed me—not 
once or twice, but half a dozen times, long kisses 
that filled me with hot shame for him, for myself, 
that I had—tliked him. The roughness of his coat 
bruised my cheek: I loathed him. And then some 
one came whistling along the hall below, and he 
pished me from him and stood listening, breathing 
in long, gasping breaths. 

I ran: when my shaky knees would hold me, I 
ran. J wanted to hide my hot face, my disgust, my 
disillusion: I wanted to put my head in mother’s lap 
and cry; I wanted to die, or be ill, so I need never 
see him again. Perversely enough, I did none of 
those things. With my face still flaming, with burn- 
ing eyes and hands that shook, I made a belated 
evening toilet and went slowly, haughtily, down 
the stairs. My hands were like ice, but I was con- 
sumed with rage. Oh, I would show him—that this 


169 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


was New York, not Iquique; that the roof was not 
his Andean tableland. © gs te ae 

Every one elaborately ignored my absence from 
dinner. The Dallas Browns, Max and Lollie were 
at bridge; Jim was alone in the den, walking the 
floor and biting at an unlighted cigar; Betty had re- 
turned to Aunt Selina and was hysterical, they said, 
and Flannigan was in deep dejection because J had 
missed my dinner. 

“Betty is making no end of a row,” Max said, 
looking up from his game, “because the old lady 
up-stairs insists on chloroform liniment. Betty says 
the smell makes her ill.” 

“And she can inhale Russian cigarettes,” Anne 
said enviously, “and gasolene fumes, without turn~ 
ing a hair. I call a revoke, Dal: you trumped spades 
on the second round.” 

Dal flung over three tricks with very bad grace, 
‘and Anne counted them with maddening delibera- 
tion. ‘i 

“Game and rubber,” she said. “Watch Dal, Max; 
he will cheat in the score if he can. Kit, don’t have 


170 





BAL FLUNG OVER THREE TRICKS WITH VERY BAD GRACE 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


another clam while I am in this house, I have eaten 
so many lately my waist rises and falls with the 
| tide.” 

“You have a stunning color, Kit,’ Lollie said. 
“You are really quite superb. Who made that 
gown?” 

“Where have you been hiding, du kleine?” Max . 
whispered, under cover of showing me the evening 
paper, with a photograph of the house and a cross 
at the cellar window where we had tried to escape. 
“If one day in the house with you, Kit, puts me in 
this condition, what will a month do?” 

From beyond the curtain of a sort of alcove, 
lighted with a red-shaded lamp, came a hum of con- 
versation, Bella’s cool, even tones and a heavy mas- 
culine voice. They were laughing; I could feel my 

chin go up. He was not even hiding his shame. 

“Max,” I asked, while the others clamored for him 
and the game, “has any one been up through the 
house since dinner? Any of the men?” 

He looked at me curiously. 

“Only Harbison,” he replied promptly. “Jim has 

172 


re tn STAIRS 


een eating his heart out in the den ever since din- 
ner; Dal played the Sonata Apassionata backward 
on the pianola—he wanted to put through one of 
Anne’s lingerie waists, on a wager that it would 
play a tune; I played craps with Lollie, and Flanni- 
gan has been washing dishes. Why?” 

Well, that was conclusive, anyhow. I had had a 
faint hope that it might have been a joke, although 
it had borne all the evidences of sincerity, certainly. 
But it was past doubting now; he had lain in wait 
for me at the landing, and had kissed me, me, when 
he thought I was Jimmy’s wife. Oh, I must have 
been very light, very contemptible, if that was what 
he thought of me! 

I went into the library and got a book, but it was 
impossible to read, with Jimmy lying on the couch 
giving vent to something between a sigh and a 
groan every few minutes. About eleven the cards 
stopped, and Bella said she would read palms. She 
began with Mr. Harbison, because she declared he 
had a wonderful hand, full of possibilities: she said 


he should have been a great inventor or a play- 
173 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


wright, and that his attitude to women was one of 
homage, respect, almost reverence. He had the 
courage to look at me, and if a glance could have 
killed he would have withered away. 

When Jimmy proffered his hand, she looked at it 
_icily, Of course she could not refuse, with Mr. Har- 
bison looking on. a 

“Rather negative,” she said coldly.. “The lines 
are obscured by cushions of flesh; no heart line at 
all, mentality small, self-indulgence and irritability 
very marked.” 

Jim held his palm up to the light and stared at it. 

“Gad!” he said. “Hardly safe for me to go 
around without gloves, is it?” 

It was all well enough for Jim to laugh, but he 
was horribly hurt. He stood around for a few min- 
utes, talking to Anne, but as soon as he could he 
slid away and went to bed. He looked very badly 
the next morning, as though he had not slept, and 
his clothes quite hung on him. He was actually 
thinner. But that is ahead of the story. : 

Max came to me while the others were sitting 


174 


Meith STAIRS 


around drinking night-caps, and asked me in a low 
tone, if he could see me in the den: he wanted to ask 
me something. Dal overheard. 

“Ask her here,” he said. “We all know what it 
is, Max. Go ahead and we’ll coach you.” 

“Will you coach me?” I asked, for Mr. Harbison 
was listening. 

“The woman does not need it,” Dal retorted. 
And then, because Max looked angry enough really 
to propose to me right there, I got up hastily and 
went into the den. Max followed, and closing the 
door, stood with his back against it. 

“Contrary to the general belief, Kit,” he began, “TI 
did not intend to ask you to marry me.” : 

I breathed easier. He took a couple of steps to- 
ward me and stood with his arms folded, looking 
down at me. 3 

“T’m not at all sure, in fact, that I shall ever pro- 
pose to you,” he went on unpleasantly. 

“You have already done it twice. You are not 
going to take those back, are you, Max?” I asked, 
looking up at him. 

175 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


But Max was not to be cajoled. He came close 
and stood with his hand on the back of my chair. 
“What happened on the roof to-night?” he demand- 
ed hoarsely. 

“T do not think it would interest you,” I retorted, 
coloring in spite of myself. | 

“Not interest me! I am shut in this blasted house ; 
I have to see the only woman I ever loved—veally 
loved,” he supplemented, as he caught my eye, “pre- 
tend she is another man’s wife. Then I sit back and 
watch her using every art—all her beauty—to make 
still another man love her, a man who thinks she is 
a married woman. If Harbison were worth the 
trouble, I would tell him the whole story, Aunt Se- 
lina be—obliterated !” 

I sat up suddenly. 

“Tf Harbison were worth the trouble!” I repeated. 
What did he mean? Had he seen— 

“T mean just this,” Max said slowly. “There is 
only one unaccredited member of this household: 
only one person, save Flannigan, who was locked 
in the furnace-room, one person who was awake and 


176 


eee STAIRS 


around the house when Anne’s jewels went, only one 
person in the house, also, who would have any 
motive for the theft.” 

“Motive?” I asked dully. 

“Poverty,” Max threw at me. ‘Oh, I mean com- 
parative poverty, of course. Who is this fellow, 
anyhow? Dal knew him at school, traveled with 
him through India. On the strength of that he 
brings him here, quarters him with decent people, 
and wonders when they are systematically robbed!” 

“You are unjust!’ I said, rising and facing him. 
“T do not like Mr. Harbison—I—TI hate him, if you 
want to know. But as to his being a thief, I—think 
it quite as likely that you took the necklace.” 

Max threw his cigarette into the fire angrily. 

“So that is how it is!” he mocked. “Tf either of 
us is the thief, it is I! You do hate him, don’t you?” 

fet left him there, flushed with irritation, and joined 
the others. Just as I entered the room, Betty burst 
through the hall door like a cyclone, and collapsed 
into a chair. ‘‘She’s a mean, cantankerous old wom- 


an!’ she declared, feeling for her handkerchief. 


177 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


“You can take care of your own Aunt Selina, Jim 
Wilson. I will never go near her again.” 

“What did you do? Poison her?’ Dallas asked 
with interest. 

““G—got camphor in her eyes,’ snuffed Betty. 
“You never—heard such a noise. I wouldn’t be a 
trained nurse for anything in the world. She—she 
called me.a hussy!” 

“You’re not going to give her up, are you, Bet- 
ty?’ Jim asked imploringly. But Betty was, and 
said so plainly. 

“Anyhow, she won’t have me back,” she finished, 
“and she has sent for—guess!” , 

_ “Have mercy!’ Dal cried, dropping to his knees. 
“Oh, fair ministering angel, she has not sent for 
me!’ 

“No,” Betty said maliciously. “She wants Bella 
—she’s crazy about her.” 


178 


CHAPTER XI 


I MAKE A DISCOVERY 








REALLY, I have left Aunt Se- 
lina rather out of it, but she was 
important as a cause, not asa 
result; at least at first. She 
came out strong later. I be- 


fies she was a very nice old 






woman, with strong likes and 
ial prejudices, which she was per- 
fectly willing to pay for. At least, 
I only presume she had likes; I know she had preju- 
dices. 
Nobody ever understood why Bella consented to 
take Betty’s place with Aunt Selina. As for me, I 
_ was too much engrossed with my own affairs to pay 
the invalid much attention. Once or twice during 
the day I had stopped in to see her, and had been re- 


ceived frigidly and with marked disapproval. I was 
179 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


in disgrace, of course, after the scene in the dining- 
room the night before. I had stood like a naughty 
child, just inside the door, and replied meekly when 
she said the pillows were overstuffed, and why 
didn’t I have the linen slips rinsed in starch water? 
She laid the blame of her illness on me, as I have 
said before, and she made Jim read to her in the 
afternoon from a book she carried with her, Coals 
of Fire on the Domestic Hearth, marking places for 
me to read. 

She sent for me that night, just as I had taken off 
my gown; so I threw on a dressing-gown and went 
in. To my horror, Jim was already there. At a 
gesture from Aunt Selina, he closed the door into 
the hall and tiptoed back beside the bed, where he 

sat staring at the figures on the silk comfort. 
| _ Aunt Selina’s first words were: 

“Where’s that flibberty-gibbet ?” 

Jim looked at me. 

“She must mean Betty,” I explained. ‘She has 
gone to bed, I think.” | 

“Don’t — let — her — in —this—room—again,” 


180 





“MY BREASTPIN, CUFF-BUTTONS, WATCH, MONEY—TAKEN, 
WITH THE DOORS LOCKED” 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


she said, with awful emphasis. “She is an infamous 
creature.” 

“Oh, come now, Aunt Selina,” Jim broke in; 
“she’s foolish, perhaps, but she’s a nice little thing.” 
Aunt Selina’s face was a curious study. Then she 
raised herself on her elbow, and, taking a flat 
chamois-skin bag from under her pillow, held it out. 

“My cameo breastpin,” she said solemnly; “my 
cuff-buttons with gold rims and storks painted on 
china in the middle; my watch, that has put me to 
bed and got me up for forty years, and my money— 
five hundred and ten dollars and forty cents !—taken 
with the doors locked under my nose.’ Which was 
ambiguous, but forcible. 

“But, good gracious, Miss Car—Aunt Selina!’ I 
- exclaimed, “you don’t think Betty Mercer took those 
things ?” 

“No,” she said grimly; “I think I probably got 
up in my sleep and lighted the fire with them, or 
sent ’em out for a walk.’’ Then she stuffed the bag 
away and sat up resolutely in bed. 

-“Tlave you made up?’ she demanded, looking 
182 


I MAKE A DISCOVERY 


from one to the other of us. “Bella, don’t tell me 
you still persist in that nonsense.” | 

“What nonsense?” I asked, getting ready to run. 

“That you do not love him.” 

Sim? 

“James,” she snapped irritably. “Do you suppose 
IT mean the policeman ?” 

I looked over at Jimmy. She had got me by the 
hand, and Jimmy was making frantic gestures to 
tell her the whole thing and be done with it. But I 
had gone too far, The mill of the gods had crushed 
me already, and I didn’t propose to be drawn out 
hideously mangled and held up as an example for 
the next two or three weeks, although it was clear 
enough that Aunt Selina disapproved of me thor- 
oughly, and would have been glad enough to find 
that no tie save the board of health held us to- 
gether. And then Bella came in, and you wouldn’t 
have known her. She had put on a straight white 
woolen wrapper, and she had her hair in two long 
braids down her back. She looked like a nice, wide- 
eyed little girl in her teens, and she had some lob- 

183 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


ster salad and a glass of port on a tray. When she 
saw the situation she put the things down and had 
the nastiness to stay and listen. 

“I’m not blind,” Aunt Selina said, with one eye 
on the tray. “You two silly children adore each 
other ; I saw some things last night.” 

Bella took a step forward; then she stopped and 
shrugged her shoulders. Jim was purple. 

“T saw you kiss her in the dining-room, remem- 
ber that!” Aunt Selina went on, giving the screw 
another turn. 

It was Bella’s turn to be excited. She gave me 
one awful stare, then she fixed her eyes on Jim. 
“Besides,” Aunt Selina went on, “‘you told me to- 
day that you loved her. Don’t deny it, James.” 

Bella couldn’t keep quiet another instant. She 
came over and stood at the foot of the bed. 

“Please don’t excite yourself, dear Miss Caru- 
thers,’ she said, in a voice like ice. “Every one 
knows that he loves her; he simply overflows with it. 
It—it is quite a by-word among their friends. They 
have been sitting together in a corner all evening.” 


184 


I MAKE A DISCOVERY 


Yes, that was what she said; when I had not 
spoken to Jimmy the whole time in the den. Bella 
was cattish, and she was jealous, too. I turned on 
my heel and went to the door; then I turned to her, 
with my hand on the knob. 

“You have been misinformed,” I said coldly. 
“You can not possibly know, having spent three 
hours in a corner yourself—with Mr. Harbison.” I 
abhor jealousy in a woman. 

Well, Aunt Selina ate all the lobster salad, and 
drank the port after Bella had told her it was beef, 
iron and wine, and she slept all night, and was able 
to sit up in a chair the next day, and was so infatu- 
ated with Bella that she would not let her out of her 
sight. But that is ahead of the story. 

At midnight the house was fairly quiet, except for 
Jim, who kept walking around the halls because he 
couldn’t sleep. I got up at last and ordered him to 
bed, and he had the audacity to have a grievance 
with me. 

“Look at my situation now!” he said, sitting pen- 
sively on a steam radiator. “Aunt Selina is crazy. 

185 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


I only kissed your hand, anyhow, and I don’t know 
why you sat in the den all evening; you might have 
known that Bella would notice it. Why couldn't 
you leave me alone to my misery?” | 
“Very well,” a said, much offended. “After this 
I shail sit with Flannigan in the kitchen. He is the 
only gentleman in the house.” 
I left him babbling apologies and went to bed, but 
I had an uncomfortable feeling that Bella had been 
a witness to our conversation, for the door into 
Aunt Selina’s room closed softly as I passed. 
I knew beforehand that I was not going to sleep. 
The instant I turned out the light the nightmare 
events of the evening ranged themselves in a proces- 
sion, or a series of tableaux, one after the other: 
Flannigan on the roof, with the bracelet on his palm, 
looking accusingly at me; Mr. Harbison and the 
,scene on the roof, with my flippancy; and the result 
‘of that flippancy—the man on the stairs, the arms 
that held me, the terrible kisses that had scorched 
my lips—it was awful! And then the absurd situa- 
tion across Aunt Selina’s bed, and Bella’s face! Oh, 


186 


I MAKE A DISCOVERY 


it was all so ridiculous—my having thought that the 
Harbison man was a gentleman, and finding him a 
cad, and worse. It was excruciatingly funny. I 
quite got a headache from laughing; indeed I 
laughed tntil I found I was crying, and then I knew 
I was going to have an attack of strangulated emo- 
tion, called hysteria. So I got up and turned on all 
the lights, and bathed my face with cologne, and 
felt better. | 

But I did not go to sleep. When the hall clock 
chimed two, I discovered I was hungry. I had had 
nothing since luncheon, and even the thirst following 
the South American goulash was gone. There was 
probably something to eat in the pantry, and if there 
was not, I was quite equal to going to the basement. 

As it happened, however, I found a very orderly 
assortment of left-overs and a pitcher of milk, which 
had no business there, in the pantry, and with plenty 
of light I was not at all frightened. 

I ate bread and butter and drank milk, and was 
fast becoming a rational person again; I had pulled 
out one of the. drawers part way, and with a tray 


187 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


across the corner IJ had improvised a comfortable 
seat. And then I noticed that the drawer was full of 
soiled napkins, and I remembered the bracelet. I 
hardly know why I decided to go through the 
drawer again, after Flannigan had already done it, 
but I did. I finished my milk and then, getting 
down on my knees, I proceeded systematically to 
empty the drawer. I took out perhaps a dozen nap- 
kins and as many doilies without finding anything. 
Then I took out a large tray cloth, and there was 
something on it that made me look farther. One 
corner of it had been scorched, the clear and well 
defined imprint of a lighted cigarette or cigar, a 
blackened streak that trailed off into a brown and 
yellow. I had a queer, trembly feeling, as if I were 
on the brink of a discovery—perhaps Anne’s pearls, 
or the cuff-buttons with storks painted on china in 
the center. But the only thing I found, down in the 
corner of the drawer, was a half-burned cigarette. 

To me, it seemed quite enough. It was one of the 
South American cigarettes, with a tobacco wrapper 
instead of paper, that Mr. Harbison smoked. 

188 


CHAPTER XII 


THE ROOF GARDEN 









\. I WAS quite ill the next morning 
_—from excitement, I suppose. 
Anyhow, I did not get up, and 
there wasn’t any breakfast. Jim 
said he roused Flannigan at 
eight o’clock, to go down 
eS = and get the fire started, and 

a } then went back to bed. But 
Flannigan did not get up. He appeared, sheepishly, 
at half-past ten, and by that time Bella was down, 
in a towering rage, and had burned her hand and got 
the fire started, and had taken up a tray for Aunt Se- 
lina and herself. | 

As the others straggled down they boiled them- 
selves eggs or ate fruit, and nobody put anything 
away. lLollie Mercer made me some tea and 
scorched toast, and brought it, about eleven o’clock. 
189 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


“T never saw such a house,” she declared. “A 
dozen housemaids couldn’t put it in order. Why 
should every man that smokes drop ashes wherever 
he happens to be?” 

“That’s the question of the ages,” I replied lan- 
guidly. “What was Max talking so horribly about 
a little while ago?” Lollie looked up aggrieved. 

“About nothing at all,” she declared. “Anne told 
me to clean the bath-tubs with oil, and I did it, that’s 
all. Now Max says he couldn’t get it off, and his 
clothes stick to him, and if he should forget and 
strike a match in the—in the usual way, he would 
explode. He can clean his own tub to-morrow,” 
she finished vindictively. 

At noon Jim came in to see me, bringing Anne as 
a concession to Bella. He was in a rage, and he 
carried the morning paper like a club in his hand. 

“What sort of a newspaper lie would you call 
this?’ he demanded irritably. “It makes me crazy; 
everybody with a mental image of me leaning over 
the parapet of the roof, waving a board, with the 


190 












yx 


\) 
Yip j 
f RX Sail: 
I 
, 
° 


VW” W\N 





| 


| 


lo 


4 
iif 
H 


/ 


“ WHAT WAS MAX TALKING SO HORRIBLY ABOUT ?” 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


rest of you sitting on my legs to keep me from over- 
balancing !’’ ; 

“Maybe there’s a picture!’ Anne said hopefully. 

Jim looked. 

“No picture,’ he announced. “I wonder why 
they restrained themselves! I wish Bella would 
keep off the roof,’”’ he added, with fresh access of 
rage, “or wear a mask or veil. One of those fel- ° 
lows is going to recognize her, and there’ll be the 
deuce to pay.” 

“When you are all through discussing this thing, 
perhaps you will tell me what is the matter,” I re- 
marked, from my couch. “Why did you lean over 
the parapet, Jim, and who sat on your legs?” 

“T didn’t; nobody’ did,” he retorted, waving the 
newspaper. “It’s a lie out of the whole cloth, that’s 
what it is. I asked you girls to be decent to those 
reporters; it never pays to offend a newspaper man. 
Listen to this, Kit.” | 

He read the article rapidly, furiously, pausing 
every now and then to make an exasperated com- 
ment. 


192 


THE ROOF GARDEN 


ATTEMPT AT ESCAPE FRUSTRATED 


MEMBERS OF THE FOUR HUNDRED DEFY THE LAW 


“Special Officer McCloud, on duty at the quar- 
antined house of James Wilson, artist and clubman, 
on Ninety-fifth Street, reported this morning a dar- 
ing attempt at escape, made at 3 A. M. It is in this 
house that some eight or nine members of the smart 
set were imprisoned during the course of a dinner 
party, when the Japanese butler developed small- 
pox. The party shut ‘in the house includes Miss 
‘Katherine McNair, the daughter of Theodore Mc- 
Nair, of the Inter-Ocean system; Mr. and Mrs. Dal- 
las Brown, the Misses Mercer, Maxwell Reed, the 
well-known clubman and whip, and a Mr. Thomas 
Harbison, guest of the Dallas Browns and a South 
American. | 

‘Officer McCloud’s story, told to a Chronicle 
reporter this morning, is as follows: The occupants 
of the house had been uneasy all day. From the 
air of subdued bustle, and from a careful inspection 


of the roof, made by the entire party during the 
193 | 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


afternoon, his suspicion had been aroused. Noth- 
ing unusual, however, occurred during the early 
part of the night. From eight o’clock to twelve 
McCloud was relieved from duty, his place being 
taken by Michael Shane, of the Eighty-sixth Street 
Station. 

““When McCloud came on duty at midnight, 
Shane reported that about eleven o’clock the search- 
light of a steamer on the river, flashing over the 
house, had shown a man crouching on the parapet,. 
evidently surveying the roof across, which at this 
point is only twelve feet distant, with a view of 
making his escape. On seeing Shane below, how- 
ever, he had beat a retreat, but not before the officer 
had seen him distinctly. He was dressed in even- 
ing clothes and wore a light tan overcoat. : 

“ “Officer McCloud relieved Shane at midnight, 
and sent for a plain-clothes man from the station- 
house. This man was stationed on the roof of the 
Bevington residence next door, with strict injunc- 
tions to prevent an escape from the quarantined 
mansion. Nothing suspicious having occurred, the 


194 


THE ROOF GARDEN 


man on the roof left about 3 A. M., reporting to 
McCloud below that everything was quiet. At that 
moment, glancing skyward, one of the officers was 
astounded to see a long narrow board project itself 
from the coping of the Wilson house, waver uncer- 
tainly for a moment, and then advance stealthily to- 
ward the parapet across. When it was within a foot’ 
or two of a resting place, McCloud called sharply to 
the invisible refugee above, at the same time firing 
his revolver in the ground. 

“*The result was surprising. The board stopped, 
trembled, swayed a little, and dropped, missing the 
vigilant officers by a hair’s breadth, and crashing to 
the cement with a terrific force. An inspection of 
the roof from the Bevington house, later, revealed 
nothing unusual. It is evident, however, that the 
quarantine is proving irksome to the inhabitants of 
the sequestered residence, most of whom are typical 
society folk, without resources in themselves. Their 
condition, without valets and maids, is certainly 
pitiable. It has been rumored that the ladies are 


doing their own hair, and that the gentlemen have 


195 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


been reduced to putting their own buttons in their 
shirts. This deplorable situation, however, is un- 
avoidable. 

“*The vigilance of the board of health has been 
most commendable in this case. Beginning with a 
wager over the telephone that they would break 
quarantine in twenty-four hours, and ending with 
the attempt to span a twelve-foot gulf with a board, 
over which to cross to freedom, these shut-in society 
folk have shown characteristic disregard of the laws 
of the state. It is quite time to extend to the mil- 
lionaire the same strictness that keeps the commuter 
at home for three weeks with the measles; that 
makes him get the milk bottles and groceries from 
the gate-post and smell like dog-soap for a month 


2,39 


afterward, as a result of disinfection. 


We sat in dead silence for a minute. Then: 

“Perhaps it is true,” I said. ‘Not of you, Jim— 
but some one may have tried to get out that way. 
In fact, I think it extremely likely.” . 
“Who? Flannigan? You couldn’t drive him out. 


196 


THE ROOF GARDEN 


He’s having the time of his life. Do you suspect 


- mer” 


“Come away and don’t fight,” Anne broke in 
pacifically. “You will have to have luncheon sent 
in, Jimmy; nobody has ordered anything from the 
shops, and I feel like old Mother Hubbard.” 

“T wish you would all go out,” I said wearily. 
“Tf every man in the house says he didn’t try to get 
over to the next roof last night, well and good. 
But you might look and see if the board is still ly- 
ing where it fell.” 

There was an instantaneous rush for the window, 
and a second’s pause. Then Jimmy’s voice, incredu- 
lous, awed: 

“Well, Pll be—blessed! There’s the board!” 

I stayed in my room all that day. My head really 
ached and then, too, I did not care to meet Mr. 
Harbison. It would have to come; I realized that 
a meeting was inevitable, but I wanted time to think 
how I would meet him. It would be impossible to 
cut him, without rousing the curiosity of the others 


to fever pitch; and it was equally impossible to ig- 
| 197 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


nore the disgraceful episode on the stairs. As it 
happened, however, I need not have worried. I 
went down to dinner, languidly, when every one was 
seated, and found Max at my right, and Mr. Har- 
bison moved over beside Bella. Every one was 
talking at once, for Flannigan, ambling around the 
table as airily as he walked his beat, had presented 
Bella with her bracelet on a salad plate, garnished 
with romaine. He had found it in the furnace-room, 
he said, where she must have dropped it. And he 
looked at me stealthily, to approve his mendacity! 

Every one was famished, and as they ate they 
discussed the board in the area-way, and pretended 
to deride it as a clever bit of press work, to revive a 
dying sensation. No one was deceived: Anne’s 
pearls and the attempt at escape, ‘coming just after, 
pointed only to one thing. I looked around the 
table, dazed. Flannigan, almost the only unknown 
quantity, might have tried to escape the night be- 
fore, but he would not have been in dress clothes. 
Besides, he must be eliminated as far as the pearls 
were concerned, having been locked in the furnace- 


198 


THE ROOF GARDEN 


room the night they were stolen. There was no one 
among the girls to suspect. The Mercer girls had 
stunning pearls, and could secure all they wanted 
legitimately; and Bella disliked them. Oh, there 
was no question about it, I decided: Dallas and Anne 
had taken a wolf to their bosom—or is it a viper ?— 
and the Harbison man was the creature. Although 
I must say that, looking over the table, at Jimmy’s 
breadth and not very imposing personality, at Max’s 
lean length, sallow skin, and bold dark eyes, at Dal- | 
las, blond, growing bald and florid, and then at the 
Harbison boy, tall, muscular, clear-eyed and sun- 
burned, one would have taken Max at first choice as 
the villain, with Dal next, Jim third, and the Harbi- 
son boy not in the running. 

It was just after dinner that the surprise was 
sprung on me. Mr. Harbison came around to me 
gravely, and asked me if I felt able to go up on the 
roof. On the roof, after last night! I had to gather 
myself together; luckily, the others were pushing 
back their chairs, showing Flannigan the liqueur 
glasses to take up, and lighting cigars. 

199 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


“T do not care to go,” I said icily. 

“The others are coming,” he persisted, “and I— 
I could give you an arm up the stairs.” 

“T believe you are good at that,” I said, looking at 
him steadily. ‘Max, will you help me to the roof?” 

Mr. Harbison really turned rather white. Then 
he bowed ceremoniously and left me. 

Max got me a wrap, and every one except Mr. 
Harbison and Bella, who was taking a mass of in- 
digestables to Aunt Selina, went to the roof. 

“Where is Tom?” Anne asked, as we reached the 
foot of the stairs. “Gone ahead to fix things,” was 
the answer. But he was not there. At the top of 
the last flight I stopped, dumb with amazement; the 
roof had been transformed, enchanted. It was a 
fairy-land of lights and foliage and colors. I had 
to stop and rub my eyes. From the bleakness of a 
tin roof in February to the brightness and greenery 
of a July roof garden! | 

“You were the immediate inspiration, Kit,” Dal- 
las said. ‘Harbison thought your headache might 
come from lack of exercise and fresh air, and he 


200 


THE ROOF GARDEN 


has worked us like nailers all day. I’ve a blister 
on my right palm, and Harbison got shocked while 
he was wiring the place, and nearly fell over the 
parapet. We bought out two full-sized florists by 
telephone.” 

It was the most amazing transformation. At 
each corner a pole had been erected, and wires 
crossed the roof diagonally, hung with red and 
amber bulbs. Around the chimneys had been massed 
evergreen trees in tubs, hiding their brick-and-mor- 
tar ugliness, and among the trees tiny lights were 
strung. Along the parapet were rows of geometri- 
cal boxwood plants in bright red crocks, and the 
flaps of a crimson and white tent had been thrown 
open, showing lights within, and rugs, wicker chairs, 
and cushions. 

Max raised a glass of benedictine and posed for 
a moment, melodramatically. 

“To the Wilson roof garden!” he said. “To Kit, 
who inspired; to the creators, who perspired; and 
to Takahiro—may he not have expired.” 

Every one was very gay; I think the knowledge 

201 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


that to-morrow Aunt Selina might be with them 
urged them to make the most of this last night of 
freedom. I tried to be jolly, and succeeded in be- 
ing feverish. Mr. Harbison did not come up to en- 
joy what he had wrought. Jim brought up his 
guitar and sang love songs in a beautiful tenor, 
looking at Bella all the time. And Bella sat in a 
steamer chair, with a rug over her and a spangled 
veil on her head, looking at the boats on the river— 
about as soft and as chastened as an acetylene head- 
light. 

And after Max had told the most improbable tale, 
which Leila advised him to sprinkle salt on, and 
Dallas had done a clog dance, Bella said it was time 
for her complexion sleep and went down-stairs, and 
broke up the party. 

“Tf she only gave half as much care to her im- 
mortal soul,’ Anne said when she had gone, “as 
‘she does to her skin, she would let that nice Harbi- 
son boy alone. She must have been brutal to him 
to-night, for he went to bed at nine o’clock. At 
least, I suppose he went to bed, for he shut himself 

202 


THE ROOF GARDEN 


in the studio, and when I knocked he advised me 
not to come in.” | 

I had pleaded my headache as an excuse for 
avoiding Aunt Selina all day, and she had not sent 
for me. Bella was really quite extraordinary. She 
was never in the habit of putting herself out for 
any one, and she always declared that the very odor 
of a sick-room drove her to Scotch and soda. But 
here she was, rubbing Aunt Selina’s back with 
chloroform liniment—and you know how that 
smells—getting her up in a chair, dressed in one of 
Bella’s wadded silk robes, with pillows under her 
feet, and then doing her hair in elaborate puffs— 
braiding her gray switch and bringing it, coronet- 
fashion, around the top of her head. She even put 
rice powder on Aunt Selina’s nose, and dabbed violet 
water behind her ears, and said she couldn’t under- 
stand why she (Aunt Selina) had never married, 
but, of course, she probably would some day! 

The result was, naturally, that the old lady 
wouldn’t let Bella out of her sight, except to go to 
the kitchen for something to eat for her. That very 

203 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


day Bella got the doctor to order ale for Aunt Se- 
lina (oh, yes; the doctor could come in; Dal said 
“it was all a-coming in, and nothing going out’) 
and she had three pints of Bass, and learned to eat 
anchovies and caviare—ail in one day. 

Bella’s conduct to Jim was disgraceful. She 
snubbed him, ignored him, tramped on him, and Jim 
was growing positively flabby. He spent most of 
his time writing letters to the board of health and 
playing solitaire. He was a pathetic figure. 

' Well, we went to bed fairly early. Bella had 
massaged Aunt Selina’s face and rubbed in cold 
cream, Anne and Dallas had comnromised on which 
window should be open in their »edroom, and the 
men had matched to see who should look at the fur- 
nace. I did not expect to sleep, but the cold night 
air had done its work, and I was asleep almost im- 
mediately. 

Some time during the early part of the night I 
wakened, and, after turning and twisting uneasily, 
I realized that I was cold. The couch in Bella’s 


dressing-room was comfortable enough, but narrow 


204 


THE ROOF GARDEN 


and low. I remember distinctly (that was what 
was so maddening: everybody thought I dreamed 
it)—-I remember getting an eiderdown comfort that 
was folded at my feet, and pulling it up around me. 
In the luxury of its warmth I snuggled down and 
went to sleep almost instantly. It seemed to me I 
had slept for hours, but it was probably an hour or 
less, when something roused me. The room was 
perfectly dark, and there was not a sound save the 
faint ticking of the clock, but I was wide awake. 
And then came the incident that in its ghastly, 
horrible absurdity made the rest of the people shout 
with laughter the next day. It was not funny then. 
For suddenly the eiderdown comfort began to slip. 
I heard no footstep, not the slightest sound ap- 
proaching me, but the comfort moved; from my 
chin, inch by inch, it slipped to my shoulders; aw- 
fully, inevitably, hair-raisingly it moved. I could 
feel my blood gather around my heart, leaving me 
cold and nerveless. As it passed my hands I gave 
an involuntary clutch for it, to feel it slip away from 
my fingers. Then the full horror of the situation 
205 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


took hold of me; as the comfort slid past my feet 
I sat up and screamed at the top of my voice. 

Of course, people came running in in all sorts of 
things. I was still sitting up, declaring I had seen 
a ghost and that the house was haunted. Dallas 
was struggling for the second armhole of his dress- 
ing-gown, and Bella had already turned on the 
lights. They said I had had a nightmare, and not 
to sleep on my back, and perhaps I was taking 
grippe. 

And just then we heard Jimmy run down the 
stairs, and fall over something, almost breaking his 
wrist. It was the eiderdown comfort, half-way up 


the studio staircase! 


206 


CHAPTER XIII 


HE DOES NOT DENY IT 










AUNT SELINA got up the next morn- 
ing and Jim told her all the strange 
things that had been happening. She 
e\ af, ? fixed on Flannigan, of course, al- 
UM i though she still suspected Betty of her 
$ watch and other valuables. The incident 
- of the comfort she called nervous indiges- 
tion and bad hours. | 
She spent the entire day going through the store- 
room and linen closets, and running her fingers over 
things for dust. Whenever she found any she looked 
at me, drew a long breath, and said, “Poor James!” 
It was maddening. And when she went through his 
clothes and found some buttons off (Jim didn’t 
keep a man, and Takahiro had stopped at his boots) 
she looked at me quite awfully. 
“His mother was a perfect housekeeper,’ she 
207 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


said. “James was brought up in clothes with the 
buttons on, put on clean shelves.” 

“Didn’t they put them on him?” I asked, almost 
hysterically. It had been a bad morning, after a 
worse night. Every one had found fault with the 
breakfast, and they straggled down one at a time 
until I was frantic. Then Flannigan had talked at 
me about the pearls, and Mr. Harbison had said, 
“Good morning,” very stiffly, and nearly rattled the 
inside of the furnace out. 

Early in the morning, too, I overheard a scrap of 
conversation between the policeman and our gentle- 
man adventurer from South America. Something 
had gone wrong with the telephone and Mr. Harbi- 
son was fussing over it with a screw-driver and a 
pair of scissors—all the tools he could find. Flan- 
nigan was lifting rugs to shake them on the roof— 
Bella’s order. 

“Wash the table linen!’ he was grumbling. “Tl 
do what I can that’s necessary. Grub has to be 
cooked, and dishes has to be washed—I’ll admit 
that. If you’re particular, make up your bed every 

208 


Eee VOES NOT DENY IT 


day; I don’t object. But don’t tell me we have to 
use thirty-three table napkins a day. What did 
folks do before napkins was invented? Tell me 
that !’—triumphantly. 

“What's the answer?’ Mr. Harbison inquired 
absently, evidently with the screw-driver in his 
mouth. 

“Used their pocket handkerchiefs! And if the 
worst comes to the worst, Mr. Harbison, these folks 
here can use their sleeves, for all I care—not that 
the women has any sleeves to speak of. Wash 
clothes I will not.” 

“Well, don’t worry Mrs. Wilson about it,’ the 
other voice said. Flannigan straightened himself 
with a grunt. 

“Mrs. Wilson!” he said. ‘A lot she would worry. 
She’s been a disappointment to me, Mr. Harbison, 
me thinking that now she’d come back to him, after 
leavin’ him the way she did, they’d be like two 
turtle-doves. Lord! the cook next door—” 

But what the cook had told about Bella and 
Jimmy was not divulged, for the Harbison man 


209 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


caught him up with a jerk and sent Flannigan, 
grumbling, with his rugs to the roof. 

It did not seem possible to carry on the deception 
much longer, but if things were bad now, what 
would they be when Aunt Selina learned she had 
been lied to, made ridiculous, generally deceived? 
And how would I be able to live in the house with 
her when she did know? Luckily, every one was 
so puzzled over the mystery in the house that num- 
bers of little things that would have been absolutely 
damning were never noticed at all. For instance, 
my asking Jimmy at luncheon that day if he took 
cream in his coffee! And Max coming to the rescue 
by dropping his watch in his glass of water, and 
creating a diversion and giving everybody an op- 
portunity to laugh by saying not to mind, it had 
been in soak before. 

Just after luncheon Aunt Selina brought me some ° 
undergarments of Jim’s to be patched. She ex- 
plained at length that he had always worn out his 
undergarments, because he always squirmed around 
so when he was sitting. And she showed me how 

210 


== 


fe wORS NOT DENY IT 


to lay one of the garments over a pillow to get the 
patch in properly. 

It was the most humiliating moment of my life, 
but there was no escape. I took my sewing to the 
roof, while she went away to find something else 
for me to do when that was finished, and I sat with 
the thing on my knee and stared at it, while rebellious 
tears rolled down my cheeks. The patch was not the 
shape of the hole at all, and every time I took a 
stitch I sewed it fast to the pillow beneath. It was 
terrible. Jim came up after a while and sat down 
across from me and watched, without saying any- 
thing. I suppose what he felt would not have been 
proper to say tome. We had both reached the point 
where adequate language failed us. Finally he said: 

“T wish I were dead.” 

“So do I,” I retorted, jerking the thread. 

“Where is she now?” 

“Looking for more of these.” I indicated the 
garment over the pillow, and he wiggled. “Please 
don’t squirm,” I said coldly. “You will wear out 
your—lingerie, and I will have to mend them.” 


211 





“+ wisH I WERE DEAD,” JIMMY SAID 


me sVOES NOT DENY IT 


He sat very still for five minutes, when I dis- 
covered that I had put the patch in crosswise instead 
of lengthwise and that it would not fit. As I jerked 
it out he sneezed. 

“Or sneeze,’ I added venomously. “You will 
tear your buttons off, and I will have to sew them 
on’? | 

Jim rose wrathfully. “ ‘Don’t sit, don’t sneeze,’ ” 
he repeated. “Don’t stand, I suppose, for fear I 
will wear out my socks. Here, give me that. If the 
fool thing has to be mended, I’ll do it myself.” 

He went over to a corner of the parapet and 
turned his back to me. He was very much of- 
fended. In about a minute he came back, trium- 
phant, and held out the result of his labor. I could 
only gasp. He had puckered up the edges of the 
hole like the neck of a bag, and had tied the thread 
around it. ‘“You—you won’t be able to sit down,” 
I ventured. 

“Don’t have any time to sit,’ he retorted prompt- 
ly. “Anyhow, it will give some, won’t it? It would 


213 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


if it was tied with elastic instead of thread. Have 
you any elastic?” 

Lollie came up just then, and Jim took himself and 
his mending down-stairs. Luckily, Aunt Selina 
found several letters in his room that afternoon 
while she was going over his clothes, and as it took 
Jim some time to explain them, she forgot the task 
she had given me altogether. 

When Lollie came up to the roof, she closed the 
door to the stairs, and coming over, drew a chair 
close to mine. 

“Have you seen much of Tom to-day ?” she asked, 
as an introduction. 

“T suppose you mean Mr. Harbison, Lollie,” I 
said. ‘‘No—not any more than] could help. Don’t 
whisper, he couldn’t possibly hear you. And if it’s 
scandal I don’t want to know it.” | 

“Look here, Kit,’ she retorted, “you needn’t be | 
so superior. If I like to talk scandal, I’m not so 
sure you aren’t making it.” 

- That was the way right along: J was making 
214 


me DOES NOT DENY TT 


-scandal; J brought them there to dinner; J let 
Bella in! 

And, of course, Anne came up then, and began 
on me at once. 

“You are a very bad girl,” she began. “What do 
you mean by treating Tom Harbison the way you 
do? He is heart-broken.” 

“T think you exaggerate my influence over him,” 
I retorted. “I haven’t treated him badly, because 
I haven’t paid any attention to him.” 

Anne threw up her hands. 

“There you are!” she said. “He worked all day 
yesterday fixing this place for you—yes, for you, 
my dear. I am not blind—and last night you re- 
fused to let him bring you up.” 

“He told you!” I flamed. 

“He wondered what he had done. And as you 
wouldn’t let him come within speaking distance of 
you, he came to me.” eae ' 

“T am sorry, Anne, since you are fond of him,” 
I said. “But to me he is impossible—intolerable. 
My reasons are quite sufficient.” 

ra ee 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


“Kit is perfectly right, Anne,” Leila broke in. “I 
tell you, there is something queer about him,” she 
added in a portentous whisper. 

Anne stiffened. | 

“He is perfect,”’ she declared. “Of good family, 
warm-hearted, courageous, handsome, clever—what 
more do you ask?” 

“Honesty,” said Leila hotly. “That a man should 
be what he says he is.” 

Anne and I both stared. 

“Tt is your Mr. Harbison,” Leila went on, “who 
tried to escape from the house by putting a board 
across to the next roof!” 

“IT don’t believe it,” said Anne. “You might 
bring me a picture of him, board in hand, and I 
wouldn’t believe it.” 

“Don’t then,” Lollie said cruelly. “Let him get 
away with your pearls; they are yours. Only, as 
sure as anything, the man who tried to escape from 
the house had a reason for escaping, and the papers 
said a man in evening dress and light overcoat. I 
found Mr. Harbison’s overcoat to-day lying in a 

216 


HE DOES NOT DENY IT 


heap in one of the maids’ rooms, and it was covered 
with brick dust all over the front. A button had 
even been torn off.” 

“Pooh!” Anne said, when she had recovered her- 
self a little. “There isn’t any reason, as far as that 
goes, why Flannigan shouldn’t have worn Tom’s 
overcoat, or—any of the others.” 

“Flannigan!” Leila said loftily. “Why, his arms 
are like piano legs; he couldn’t get into it. As for 
the others, there is only one person who would fit, 
or nearly fit, that overcoat, and that is Dallas, 
Anne.” , 

While Anne was choking down her wrath, Leila 
got up and darted out of the tent. When she came 
back she was triumphant. 

“Look,” she said, holding out her hand. And on 
her palm lay a lightish brown button. “I found it 
just where the paper said the board was thrown out, 
and it is from Mr. Harbison’s overcoat, without a 
doubt.” 

Of course I should not have been surprised. A 
man who would kiss a woman on a dark staircase 

2177 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


—a woman he had known only two days—was ca- 
pable of anything. 

“Kit has only been a little keener than the rest of 
us,” Lollie said. “She found him out yesterday.” 

“Upon my word,” said Anne indignantly, prepar- 
ing to go, “if I didn’t know you girls so well, I 
would think you were crazy. And now, just to off- 
set this, I can tell you something. Flannigan told 
me this morning not to worry; that he has my pearl 
collar spotted, and that young ladies will have thew 
jokes!’ | 

Yes, as I said before, it was a cheerful, joy-pro- 
ducing situation. 

I sat and thought it over after Anne’s parting 
shot, when Leila had flounced down-stairs. Things 
were closing in: I gave the situation twenty-four 
hours to develop. At the end of that time Flanni- 
gan would accuse me openly of knowing where the 
pearls were; I would explain my silly remark to 
him, and the mine would explode—under Aunt Se- 
lina. | 

I was sunk in dejected reverie when some one 


218 


Pas ORS: NOT: DENY IT 


came on the roof. When he was opposite the open- 
ing in the tent, I saw Mr. Harbison, and at that 
moment he saw me. He paused uncertainly, then 
he made an evident effort and came over to me. 

“You are—better to-day?” 

“Quite well, thank you.” 

“T am glad you find the tent useful. Does it keep 
off the wind?” 

“Tt is quite a shelter’’—frigidly. 

He still stood, struggling for something to say. 
Evidently nothing came to his mind, for he lifted 
the cap he was wearing, and, turning away, began 
to work with the wiring of the roof. He was clever 
with tools; one could see that. If he was a profes- 
sional gentleman-burglar, no doubt he needed to be. 
After a bit, finding it necessary to climb to the 
parapet, he took off his coat, without even a glance 
in my direction, and fell to work vigorously. 

One does not need to like a man to admire him 
_ physically, any more than one needs to like a race- 
horse or any other splendid animal. No one could 
deny that the man on the parapet was a splendid 

219 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


animal; he looked quite big enough and strong 
enough to have tossed his slender bridge across the 
gulf to the next roof, without any difficulty, and co- 
ordinate enough to have crossed on it with a flourish 
to safety. 

Just then there was a rending, tearing sound from 
the corner and a muttered ejaculation. I looked up 
in time to see Mr, Harbison throw up his arms, 
make a futile attempt to regain his balance, and dis- 
appear over the edge of the roof. One instant he 
was standing there, splendid, superb; the next, the 
corner of the parapet was empty, all that stood there 
was a broken, splintered post and a tangle of wires. 

I could not have moved at first; at least, it seemed 
hours before the full significance of the thing pene- 
trated my dazed brain. When I got up I seemed to 
walk, to crawl, with leaden weights holding back 
my feet. 

When I got to the corner I had to catch the post 
for support. I knew somebody was saying, “Oh, 
how terrible!” over and over. It was only after- 
ward that I knew it had been myself. And then 


220 


be DOES NOT DENY IF 


- some other voice was saying, “Don’t be alarmed. 
Please don’t be frightened. I’m all right.” 

I dared to look over the parapet, finally, and in- 
stead of a crushed and unspeakable body, there was 
Mr. Harbison, sitting about eight feet below me, 
with his feet swinging into space and a long red 
scratch from the corner of his eye across his cheek. 
There was a sort of mansard there, with windows, 
and just enough coping to keep him from rolling 
off. 

“T thought you had fallen—all the way,” I 
gasped, trying to keep my lips from trembling. “TI 
—oh, don’t dangle your feet like that!’ 

He did not seem at all glad of his escape. He sat 
there gloomily, peering into the gulf beneath. 

“Tf it wasn’t so—er—messy and generally un- 
pleasant,” he replied without looking up, “I would 
slide off and go the rest of the way.” ; 

“You are childish,” I said severely. ‘See if you’ 
can get through the window behind you. If you 
can not, I’ll come down and unfasten it.” But the 
window was open, and I had a chance to sit down 


ail 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


and gather up the scattered ends of my nerves. To 
my surprise, however, when he came back he made 
no effort to renew our conversation. He ignored 
me completely, and went to work at once to repair 
the damage to his wires, with his back to me. 

“T think you are very rude,” I said at last. “You 
fell over there and I thought you were killed. The 
nervous shock I experienced is just as bad as if you 
had gone—all the way.” — 

He put down the hammer and came over to me 
without speaking. Then, when he was quite close, — 
he said: 

“T am very sorry if I startled you. I did not flat- 
ter myself that you would be profoundly affected, in 
any event.” 

“Oh, as to that,” I said lightly, “it makes me ill 
for days if my car runs over a dog.” He looked at 
me in silence. “You are not going to get up on 
that parapet again?” 

“Mrs. Wilson,” he said, without paying the 
slightest attention to my question, “will you tell me 
what I have done?” 7 


222 


HE DOES NOT DENY IT 


“Done?” 

“Or have not done? I have racked my brains— 
stayed awake all of last night. At first I hoped it 
was impersonal, that, womanlike, you were merely 
venting general disfavor on one particular indi- 
vidual. But—your hostility is to me, personally.” 

I raised my eyebrows, coldly interrogative. 

“Perhaps,” he went on calmly—“perhaps I was 
a fool here on the roof—the night before last. If 
I said anything that I should not, I ask your pardon. 
If it is not that, I think you ought to ask mine!” 

I was angry enough then. 

“There can be only one opinion about your con- 
duct,’ I retorted warmly. “It was worse than 
brutal. It—it was unspeakable. JI have no words 
for it—except that I loathe it—and you.” 

He was very grim by this time. “I have heard 
you say something like that before—only I was not 
the unfortunate in that case.” 

“Oh!’ I was choking. 

“Under different circumstances I should be the 
last person to recall anything so—personal. But the 


223 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


circumstances are unusual.’ He took an angry 
step toward me. “Will you tell me what I have 
done? Or shall I go down and ask the others?” 

“You wouldn’t dare,” I cried, “‘or I will tell them ° 
what you did! How you waylaid me on those stairs 
there, and forced your caresses, your kisses, on me! 
Oh, I could die with shame!” 

The silence that followed was as unexpected as it 
was ominous. I knew he was staring at me, and 
I was furious to find myself so emotional, so much 
more the excited of the two. Finally, I looked up. 

“You can not deny it,” I said, a sort of anti- 
climax. 

“No.” He was very quiet, very grim, quite com- 
posed. ‘‘No,” he repeated judicially. “I do not 
deny it.”’ 

He did not? Or he would not? Which? 


224 


CHAPTER XIV 


ALMOST, BUT NOT QUITE 






DAL had been acting strangely all 
day. Once, early in the evening, 
when I had doubled no trump, he 
led me a club without apology, 
and.later on, during his dummy, 
I saw him writing our names on 


the back of an envelope, and put- 





. 4 
opportunity I went to Max. 


ting numbers after them. At my earliest 


“There is something the matter with Dal, Max,” 
I volunteered. “He has been acting strangely all 
day, and just now he was making out a list—names 
and numbers.” | 

“You're to blame for that, Kit,’ Max said seri- 
ously. ‘‘You put washing soda instead of baking 
soda in those biscuits to-day, and he thinks he is a 
steam laundry. Those are laundry lists he’s making 


225 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


out. He asked me a little while ago if I wanted a 
domestic finish.” 

Yes, I had put washing soda in the biscuits. The 
book said soda, and how is one to know which is. 
meant? 

“T do not think you are calculated for a domestic 
. finish,’ I said coldly as I turned away. “In any 
case I disclaim any such responsibility. _But—there 
is something on Dal’s mind.” 

Max came after me. ‘‘Don’t be cross, Kit. You 
haven’t said a nice word to me to-day, and you go 
around bristling with your chin up and two red 
spots on your cheeks—like whatever-her-name-was 
with the snakes instead of hair. I don’t know why 
I’m so crazy about you: I always meant to love a © 
girl with a nice disposition.” 

I left him then. Dal had gone into the reception- 
room and closed the doors. And because he had 
been acting so strangely, and partly to escape from 
Max, whose eyes looked threatening, I followed 
him. Just as I opened the door quietly and looked 
in, Dallas switched off the lights, and I could hear 


226 


ALMOST, BUT NOT QUITE 


_ him groping his way across the room. Then some- 

body—not Dal—spoke from the corner, cautiously. 

“Is that you, Mr. Brown, sir?” It was Flanni- 
gan. 

“Yes. Is everything here?” 

“All but the powder, sir. Don’t step too close. 
They’re spread all over the place.” 

“Have you taken the curtains down?” 

ey ea csir.”” 

“Matches ?” 

“Here, sir.” 

“Light one, will you, Flannigan? I want to see 

. the time:” | 

The flare showed Dallas and Flannigan bent over 
the timepiece. And it showed something else. The 
rug had been turned back from the windows which 
opened on the street, and the curtains had been re- 
moved. On the bare hardwood floor just beneath 
the windows was an array of pans of various sizes, 
dish pans, cake tins, and a metal foot tub. The 
pans were raised from the floor on bricks, and 
seemed to be full of paper. All the chairs and tables 

227 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


were pushed back against the wall, and the bric-a- 
brac was stacked on the mantel. 

“Half an hour yet,” Dal said, closing his watch. 

“Plenty of time, and remember the signal, four. 
short and two long.” 

“Four short and two long—all right, sir.” 

“And—Flannigan, here’s something for you, on 
account.” 

“Thank you, sir.” 

Dal turned to go out, tripped over the rug, said 
something, and passed me without an idea of my 
presence. A moment later Flannigan went out, and 
I was left, huddled against the wall, and alone. 

It was puzzling enough. “Four long and two 
short!’ “All but the powder!’ Not that I believed 
for a moment what Max had said, and anyhow 
Flannigan was the sanest person I ever saw in my 
life. But it all seemed a part of the mystevy that 
had been hanging over us for several days. I felt 
my way across the room and knelt by the pans, Yes, 
they were there, full of paper and mounted on 
bricks. It had not been a delusion. 


228 


ALMOST, BUT NOT QUITE 


And then I straightened on my knees suddenly, 
for an automobile passing under the windows had 
sounded four short honks and two long ones. The 
signal was followed instantly by a crash. The foot 
bath had fallen from its supports, and lay, quiver- 
ing and vibrating with horrid noises at my feet. 
The next moment Mr. Harbison had thrown open 
the door and leaped into the room. 

“Who’s there?” he demanded. Against the light 
I could see him reaching for his hip pocket, and the 
rest crowding up around him. 

Site only me, I quavered, “that is, J. The— 
the dish pan upset.” 

“Dish pan! Bella said from back in the crowd. 
wii ot course |” 

Jim forced his way through then and turned on 
the lights. I have no doubt I looked very strange, 
kneeling there on the bare floor, with a row of pans 
mounted on bricks behind me, and the furniture all 
piled on itself in a back corner. 

“Kit! What in the world—” Jim began, and 
- stopped. He stared from me to the pans, to the 
220 . 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


windows, to the bric-a-brac on the mantel, and back 
to me. | t 

I sat stonily silent. Why should i explain? 
Whenever I got into a foolish position, and tried to 
explain, and tell how it happened, and who was 
really to blame, they always brought it back to me 
somehow. So I sat there on the floor and let them 
stare. And finally Lollie Mercer got her breath and 
said, “How perfectly lovely: it’s a charade!” 

And Anne guessed “kitchen” at once. “Kit, you 
know, and the pans and—all that,” she said vaguely. 
At that they all took to guessing! And I sat still, 
until Mr. Harbison saw the storm in my eyes and 
came over to me. 

“Have you hurt your ankle?” he said in an un- 
dertone. “Let me help you up.” 

“T am not hurt,” I said coldly, “and even if I were, 
if would be unnecessary to trouble you.” 

“T can not help being troubled,” he returned, just 
as evenly. “You see, ‘it makes me ill for days if my 
car runs over a dog.’ ” 


Luckily, at that moment Dal came in. He pushed 
230 


ALMOST, BUT NOT QUITE 


his way through the crowd without a word, shut 
off the lights, crashed through the pans and 
slammed the shutters close. Then he turned and. 
addressed the rest. | 

“Of all the lunatics—!” he began, only there was 
more to it than that. “A fellow goes to all kinds 
of trouble to put an end to this miserable situation, 
and the entire household turns out and sets to work 
to frustrate the whole scheme. You /ike to stay 
here, don’t you, like chickens in a coop? Where’s 
Flannigan ?” 

Nobody understood Dal’s wrath then, but it seems 
he meant to arrange the plot himself, and when it 
was ripe, and the hour nearly come, he intended to 
wager that he could break the quarantine, and to take 
any odds he could get that he would free the entire : 
party in halfan hour. As for the plan itself, it was 
idiotically simple; we were perfectly delighted when 
we heard it. It was so simple and yet so compre- , 
hensive. We didn’t see how it could fail. Both the 
Mercer girls kissed Dal on the strength of it, and 
Anne was furious. Jim was not so much pleased, 


231 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


for some reason or other, and Mr. Harbison looked 
thoughtful rather than merry. Aunt Selina had 
gone to bed. 

The idea, of course, was to start an embryo fire 
just inside the windows, in the pans, to feed it with 
the orange-fire powder that is used on the Fourth of 
July, and when we had thrown open the windows 
and yelled “fire” and all the guards and reporters had 
rushed to the front of the house, to escape quietly 
by a rear door from the basement kitchen, get into 
machines Dal had in waiting, and lose ourselves as 
quickly as we could. 

You can see how simple it was. 

We were terribly excited, of course. Every one 
rushed madly for motor coats and veils, and Dal 
shuffled the numbers so the people going the same 
direction would have the same machine. We called 
to each other as we dressed about Mamaroneck or 
Lakewood or wherever we happened to have rela- 
tives. Everybody knew everybody else, and his 
friends. The Mercer girls were going to cruise 
until the trouble hlew over, the Browns were going 


2 


ALMOST, BUT NOT QUITE 


to Pinehurst, and Jim was going to Africa to hunt, 
if he could get out of the harbor. 

Only the Harbison man seemed to have no plans; 
quite suddenly with the world so near again, the 
world of country houses and steam yachts and all 
the rest of it, he ceased to be one of us. It was not 
his world at all. He stood back and watched the 
kaleidoscope of our coats and veils, half-quizzically, 
but with something in his face that I had not seen 
there before. If he had not been so self-reliant and 
big, I would have said he was lonely. Not that he 
was pathetic in any sense of the word. Of course, 
he avoided me, which was natural and exactly what 
I wished. Bella never was far from him and at the 
last she loaded him with her jewel-case and a muff 
and traveling-bag and asked him to her cousins’ on 
Long Island. I felt sure he was going to decline, 
when he glanced across at me. 

“Do go,” I said, very politely. “They are charm- 
ing people.” And he accepted at once! 

It was a transparent plot on Bella’s part: Two 


elderly maiden ladies, house miles from anywhere, 


233 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


long evenings in the music-room with an open fire 
and Bella at the harp playing the two songs she 
knows. 

When we were ready and gathered in the kitchen, 
in the darkness, of course, Dal went up on the roof 
and signaled with a lantern to the cars on the drive 
Then he went down-stairs, took a last look at the 
drawing-room, fired the papers, shook on the pow- 
der, opened the windows and yelled “fire!” 

Of course, huddled in the kitchen we had heard 
little or nothing. But we plainly heard Dal on the 
first floor and Flannigan on the second yelling 
“fire,” and the patter of feet as the guards ran to 
the front of the house. And at that instant we re- 
membered Aunt Selina! 

That was the cause of the whole trouble. I don’t 
know why they turned on me: she wasn’t my aunt. 
' But by the time we had got her out of bed, and had 
- wrapped her in an eiderdown comfort, and stuck 
slippers on her feet and a motor veil on her head, the 
glare at the front of the house was beginning to die 


away. She didn’t understand at all and we had no. 


234 


ALMOST, BUT NOT QUITE 


time to explain. I remember that she wanted to go 
back and get her “plate,” whatever that may be, but 
Jim took her by the arm and hurried her along, and 
the rest, who had waited, and were in awful tempers, y 
stood aside and let them out first. 

The door to the area steps was open, and by the 
street lights we could see a fence and a gate, which 
opened on a side street. Jim and Aunt Selina ran 
straight for the gate; the wind blowing Aunt Se- 
lina’s comfort like a sail. Then, with our feet, so 
to speak, on the first rungs of the ladder of Liberty, 
it slipped. A half-dozen guards and reporters came 
around the house and drove us back like sheep into 
a slaughter pen. It was the most humiliating mo- 
ment of my life. 

Dal had been for fighting a way through, and just 
for a minute I think I went Berserk myself. But 
Max spied one of the reporters setting up a flash 
light as we stood, undecided, at the top of the steps, 
and after that there was nothing to do but retreat. 
We backed down slowly, to show them we were not 


afraid. And when we were all in the kitchen again, 


235 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


and had turned on the lights and Bella was crying 
with her head against Mr. Harbison’s arm, Dal said 
cheerfully, 

“Well, it has done some good, anyhow. We 
have lost Aunt Selina.” 

And we all shook hands on it, although we were 
sorry about Jim. And Dal said we would have 
some champagne and drink to Aunt Selina’s com- 
fort, and we could have her teeth fumigated and 
send them to her. Somebody said “Poor old Jim,” 
and at that Bella looked up. 

She stared around the group, and then she went 
quite pale. 

“Jim!” she gasped. “Do you mean—that Jim is 
—out there too?” 

“Jim and Aunt Selina!’ I said as calmly as I 
could for joy. You can see how it simplified the 
situation for me. “By this time they are a mile 
away, and going!” ) 

Everybody shook hands again except Bella. She 
had dropped into a chair, and sat biting her lip and 
breathing hard, and she would not join in any of 

236 


ALMOST, BUT NOT QUITE 


the hilarity at getting rid of Aunt Selina. Finally 
she got up and knocked over her chair. 

“You are a lot of cowards,” she stormed. “You 
deserted them out there, left them. Heaven knows! 
where they are—a defenseless old woman, and—and 
a man who did not even have an overcoat. And it 
is snowing!” 

“Never mind,” Dal said reassuringly. “He can 
borrow Aunt Selina’s comfort. Make the old lady 
discard from weakness. Anyhow, Bella, if I know 
anything of human nature, the old lady will make 
it hot enough for him. Poor old Jim!’ 

Then they shook hands again, and with that there 
came a terrible banging at the door, which we had 
locked. 

“Open the door!” some one commanded. It was 
one of the guards. 

“Open it yourself!” Dallas called, moving a 
kitchen table to reénforce the lock. 

“Open that door or we will break it in!” 

Dallas put his hands in his pockets, seated him- 
self on the table, and whistled cheerfully. We could 


237 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


hear them conferring outside, and they made an- 
other appeal which was refused. Suddenly Bella 
came over and confronted Dallas. | 

“They have brought them back!” she said dra- 
matically. “They are out there now; I distinctly 
heard Jim’s voice. Open that door, Dallas!” 

“Oh, don’t let them in!” I wailed. It was quite 
involuntary, but the disappointment was too awful. 
“Dallas, don’t open that door!” 

Dal swung his feet and smiled from Bella to me. 

“Think what a solution it is to all our difficulties,” 
he said easily. ‘Without Aunt Selina I could be 
happy here indefinitely.” 

There was more knocking, and somebody—Max, 
I think—-said to let them in, that it was a fool thing 
anyhow, and that he wanted to go to bed and forget 
it; his feet were cold. And just then there was a 
crash, and part of one of.the windows fell in. The 
next blow from outside brought the rest of the glass, 
and—somebody was coming through, feet first. It 
was Jim. 

He did not speak to any of us, but turned and 

238 


ALMOST, BUT NOT QUITE 


helped in a bundle of red and yellow silk comfort 
that proved to be Aunt Selina, also feet first. I had 
a glimpse of a half-dozen heads outside, guards and 
reporters. Then Jim jerked the shade down and 
unswathed Aunt Selina’s legs so that she could walk, 
offered his arm, and stalked past us and up-stairs, 
without a word! 

None of us spoke. We turned out the lights and 
went up-stairs and took off our wraps and went to 
bed. It had been almost a fiasco. 


239 


CHAPTER XV 


SUSPICION AND DISCORD 


EVERY one was nasty the 
| next morning. Aunt Selina 
declared that her feet 
were frost-bitten and 


cll a 
Px\ 






kept Bella rubbing them 
#®% with ice water all morn- 

: ing. And Jim was im- 
Ss possible. He refused to speak 
to any of us and he watched 
Bella furtively, as if he suspected her of trying to get 
him out of the house. 

When luncheon time came around and he had 
shown no indication of going to the telephone and 
ordering it, we had a conclave, and Max was chosen 
to remind him of the hour. Jim was shut in the 
studio, and we waited together in the hall whilé 

240 


SUSPICION AND DISCORD 


Max went up. When he came down he was some- 
what ruffled. ; 

“He wouldn’t open the door,” he reported, “and 
jwhen I told him it was meal time, he said he wasn’t 
hungry, and he didn’t give a whoop about the rest 
of us. He had asked us here to dinner: he hadn’t 
proposed to adopt us.” 

So we finally ordered luncheon ourselves, and 
about two o’clock Jim came down-stairs, sheepishly, 
and ate what was left. Anne declared that Bella 
had been scolding him in the upper hall, but I 
doubted it. She was never seen to speak to him 
unnecessarily. 

The excitement of the escape over, Mr. Harbison 
and I remained on terms of armed neutrality. And 
Max still hunted for Anne’s pearls, using them, the 
men declared, as a good excuse to avoid tinkering 
with the furnace or repairing the dumb-waiter, | 
which took the queerest notions, and stopped once, 
half-way up from the kitchen, for an hour, with the 
dinner on it. Anyhow, Max was searching the 
house systematically, armed with a copy of Poe’s 


ZAT- 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


Purloined Letter and Gaboriau’s Monsieur Lecog. 
He went through the seats of the chairs with hat- 
pins, tore up the beds, and lifted rugs, until the 
house was in a state of confusion. And the next 
) day, the fourth, he found something—not much, but 
it was curious. He had been in the studio, poking 
around behind the dusty pictures, with Jimmy ex- 
postulating every time he moved anything and the 
rest standing around watching him. 

Max was strutting. 

“We get it by elimination,” he said importantly. 
“The pearls being nowhere else in the house, they 
must be here in the studio. Three parts of the 
studio having yielded nothing, they must be in the 
fourth. Ladies and gentlemen, let me have your at- 
tention for one moment. I tap this canvas with my 
wand—there is nothing up my sleeve. Then I pre- 
pare to move the canvas—so. And I put my hand 
in the pocket of this disreputable velvet coat, so. 
Behold!” | 

Then he gave a low exclamation and looked at 
something he held in his hand. Every one stepped 

242 


YVTION SANNV WOU dSVID GNOWVIC AHL SVM WiIVd SIH NO 





WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


forward, and on his palm was the small diamond 
clasp from Anne’s collar! 

Jimmy was apoplectic. He tried to smile, but no 
one else did. | 

“Well, I'll be flabbergasted!’ he said. “I say, you 
people, you don’t think for a minute that I put that 
thing there? Why, I haven’t worn that coat for a 
month. It’s—it’s a trick of yours, Max.” 

But Max shook his head; he looked stupefied, and 
stood gazing from the clasp to the pocket of the old 
painting-coat. Betty dropped on a folding stool, that 
promptly collapsed with her and created a welcome 
diversion, while Anne pounced on the clasp greedily, 
with a little cry. | 

‘We will find it all now,” she said excitedly. 
“Did you look in the other pockets, Max?” 

Then, for the first time, I was conscious of an air 
of constraint among the men. Dallas was whistling 
softly, and Mr. Harbison, having rescued Betty, was 
standing silent and aloof, watching the scene with 
non-committal eyes. It was Max who spoke first, 
after a hurried inventory of the other pockets. 


244 


SUSPICION AND DISCORD 


“Nothing else,” he said constrainedly. “T’ll move 
the rest of the canvases.” 

But Jim interfered, to every one’s surprise. 

“T wouldn’t, if I were you, Max. There’s noth- 
ing back there. I had ’em out yesterday.’ He was 
quite pale. 

“‘Nonsense!’”? Max said gruffly. “If it’s a prac- 
tical joke, Jim, why don’t you ’fess up? Anne has 
worried enough.” } 

“The pearls are not there, I tell you,” Jim began. 
-Although the studio was cold, there were little fine 
beads of moisture on his face. “I must ask you not 
to move those pictures.” And then Aunt Selina 
came to the rescue: she stalked over and stood with 
her back against the stack of canvases. 

_ “As far as I can understand this,” she declaimed, 
“you gentlemen are trying to intimate that James 
knows something of that young woman’s jewelry, 
because you found part of it in his pocket. Cer- 
tainly you will not move the pictures. How do you 
know that the young gentleman who said he found 
it there didn’t have it up his sleeve?” 


245, 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


She looked around triumphantly, and Max glow- 
ered. Dallas soothed her, however. | 

“Exactly so,” he said. ‘How do we know that 
- Max didn’t have the clasp up his sleeve? My dear 
lady, neither my wife nor I care anything for the 
pearls, as compared with the priceless pearl of peace. 
I suggest tea on the roof; those in favor—? My 
arm, Miss Caruthers.” 

It was all well enough for Jim to say later that 
he didn’t dare to have the canvases moved, for he 
had stuck behind them all sorts of chorus girl photo- 
graphs and life-class crayons that were not for 
Aunt Selina’s eye, besides four empty siphons, two 
full ones, and three bottles of whisky. Not a soul 
believed him: there was a new element of suspicion 
and discord in the house. 

Every one went up on the roof and left him to his 
mystery. Anne drank her tea in a preoccupied si- 
lence, with half-closed eyes, an attitude that boded 
ill to somebody. The rest were feverishly gay, and 
Aunt Selina, with a pair of arctics on her feet and 
a hot-water bottle at her back, sat in the middle of © 

246 


SUSPICION AND DISCORD 


the tent and told me familiar anecdotes of Jimmy’s 
early youth (had he known, he would have slain 
her). Betty and Mr. Harbison had found a medi- 
cine ball, and were running around like a pair of 
children. It was quite certain that neither his 
escape from death nor my accusation weighed heav- 
ily on him. 

While Aunt Selina was busy with the time Jim 
had swallowed an open safety pin, and just as the 
pin had been coughed up, or taken out of his nose— 
I forget which—Jim himself appeared and sulkily 
demanded the privacy of the roof for his training 
hour. 

Yes, he was training. Flannigan claimed to know 
the system that had reduced the president to what he 
is, and he and Jim had a seance every day which left 
Jim feeling himself for bruises all evening. He 
claimed to be losing flesh; he said he could actually 
feel it going, and he and Flannigan had spent an en- 
tire afternoon in the cellar three days before with a 
potato barrel, a cane-seated chair and a lamp. 


The whole thing had been shrouded in mystery. 
247 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


They sandpapered the inside of the barrel and took 
out all the nails, and when they had finished they car- 
ried it to the roof and put it in a corner behind the 
tent. Everybody was curious, but Flannigan refused 
any information about it, and merely said it was part 
of his system. Dal said that if he had anything like 
that in his system he certainly would be glad to get 
rid of it. 

At a quarter to six Jim appeared, still sullen from 
the events of the afternoon and wearing a dressing- 
gown and a pair of slippers, Flannigan following 
him with a sponge, a bucket of water and an armful 


of bath towels. Everybody protested at having to 


move, but he was firm, and they all filed down the 


stairs. I was the last, with Aunt Selina just ahead of 
me. At the top of the stairs she turned around sud- 
denly to me. 

“That policeman looks cruel,” she said. “What’s 
more, he’s been in a bad humor all day. More than 
likely he’ll put James flat on the roof and tramp on 
him, under pretense of training him, All policemen 
are inhuman.” 3 


248 


SUSPICION AND DISCORD 


“He only rolls him over a barrel or something like 
that,”’ I protested. 

“James had a bump like an egg over his ear last 
night,’ Aunt Selina insisted, glaring at Flannigan’s 
unconscious back. “I don’t think it’s safe to leave 
him. It is my time to relax for thirty minutes, or I 
would watch him. You will have to stay,” she said, 
fixing me with her imperious eyes. 

So 1 stayed. Jim didn’t want me, and Flannigan 
muttered mutiny. But it was easier to obey Aunt 
Selina than to clash with her, and anyhow I wanted 
to see the barrel in use. 

I never saw any one train before. It is not a joy- 
ful spectacle. First, Flannigan made Jim run, 
around and around the roof. He said it stirred up 
his food and brought it in contact with his liver, to 
be digested. 

Flannigan, from meekness and submission, of a 
sort, in the kitchen, became an autocrat on the roof. 

“Once more,” he would say. ‘Pick up your feet, 
sir! Pick up your feet!” 

And Jim would stagger doggedly past me, where 


249 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


I sat on the parapet, his poor cheeks shaking and the 
tail of his bath-robe wrapping itself around his legs. 
Yes, he ran in the bath-robe in deference to me. It 
seems there isn’t much to a running suit. 

“Head up,’ Flannigan would say. “Lift your 
knees, sir. Didn’t you ever see a horse with string 
halt ?” 

He let him stop finally, and gave him a moment to 
get his breath. Then he set him to turning somer- 
saults. They spread the cushions from the couch in 
the tent on the roof, and Jim would poke his head 
down and say a prayer, and then curve over as grace- 
fully as a sausage and come up gasping, as if he had 
been pushed off a boat. 

“Five pounds a day; not less, sir,” Flannigan said 
encouragingly. “You'll drop it in chunks.” 

Jim looked at the tin as if he expected to see the 
chunks lying at his feet. 

“Yes,” he said, wiping the back of his neck. “If 
we're in here thirty days that will be one hundred 
and fifty pounds. Don’t forget to stop in time, Flan- 
nigan. I don’t want to melt away like a candle.” 


250 


SUSPICION AND DISCORD 


He was cheered, however, by the promise of re- 
duction. 

“What do you think of that, Kit?” he called to me. ; 
“Your uncle is going to look as angular as a problem 
in geometry. [Il—I’ll be the original reductio ad 
absurdum. Do you want me to stand on my 
head, Flannigan? Wouldn’t that reduce some- 
ching ?” 

“Your brains, sir,” Flannigan retorted gravely, 
and presented a pair of boxing-gloves. Jim visibly 
quailed, but he put them on. 

“Do you know, Flannigan,”’ he remarked, as he 
fastened them, “I’m thinking of wearing these all 
the time. They hide my character.” 

Flannigan looked puzzled, but he did not ask an 
explanation. He demanded that Jim shed the bath- 
robe, which he finally did, on my promise to watch 
the sunset. Then for fully a minute there was no 
sound save of feet running rapidly around the roof, 
and an occasional soft thud. Each thud was accom- 
panied by a grunt or two from Jim. Flannigan was 
grimly silent. Once there was a smart rap, an oath 


251 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


from the policeman, and a mirthless chuckle from 
Jim. The chuckle ended in a crash, however, and I 
\turned. Jim was lying on his back on the roof, and 
'Flannigan was wiping his ear with a towel. Jim sat 
up and ran his hand down his ribs. 

“They’re all here,” he observed after a minute. “T 
thought I missed one.” 

“The only way to take a man’s weight down,” 
Flannigan said dryly. : 

Jim got up dizzily. 

“Down on the roof, I suppose you mean,” he said. 

The next proceedings were mysterious. Flannigan 
rolled the barrel into the tent, and carried in a small 
glass lamp. With the material at hand he seemed to 
be effecting a combination, no new one, to judge by © 
his facility. Then he called Jim. — 

At the door of the tent Jim turned to me, his bath- 
robe toga fashion around his shoulders. 

“This is a-very essential part of the treatment,” 
he said solemnly. “The exercise, according to Flan- 
nigan, loosens up the adipose tissue. The next step is 
to boil it out. I hope, unless your instructions com- 


252 


SUSPICION AND DISCORD 


pel you, that you will at least have the decency to 
stay out of the tent.” 

“IT am going at once,’ I said, outraged. “I’m not 
here because ’'m mad about it, and you know it. 
And don’t pose with that bath-robe. If you think 
you’re a character out of Roman history, look at 
your legs.” 

“T didn’t mean to offend you,” he said sulkily. 
“Only I’m tired of having you choked down my 
throat every time I open my mouth, Kit. And don’t 
go just yet. Flannigan is going for my clothes as 
soon as he lights the—the lamp , and—somebody 
ought to watch the stairs.” 

That was all there was to it. I said I would guard 
the steps, and Flannigan, having ignited the combi- 
nation, whatever it was, went down-stairs. How was 
I to know that Bella would come up when she did? 
Was it my fault that the lamp got too high, and that 
Flannigan couldn’t hear Jim calling? or that just as 
Bella reached the top of the steps Jim should come to 
the door of the tent, wearing the barrel part of his 


hot-air cabinet, and yelling for a doctor? 


253 


‘WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


Bella came to a dead stop on the upper step, with 
her mouth open. She looked at Jim, at the inade- 
quate barrel, and from them she looked at me. Then 
she began to laugh, one of her hysterical giggles, and 
she turned and went down again. As Jim and I 
stared at each other we could hear her gurgling 
down the hall below. 

She had violent hysterics for an hour, with Anne 
rubbing her forehead and Aunt Selina burning a 
feather out of the feather duster under her nose. 
Only Jim and I understood, and we did not tell. 
Luckily, the next thing that occurred drove Bella 
and her nerves from everybody’s mind, | 

At seven o’clock, when Bella had dropped asleep 
and everybody else was dressed for dinner, Aunt Se- 
lina discovered that the house was cold, and ordered 
Dal to the furnace. ; 

It was Dal’s day at the furnace; Flannigan had 
been relieved of that part of the work after twice set- 
ting fire to a chimney. 

In five minutes Dal came back and spoke a few 


words to Max, who followed him to the basement, 


254 


SUSPICION AND DISCORD 


and in ten minutes more Flannigan puffed up the 
steps and called Mr. Harbison. 

I am not curious, but I knew that something had 
happened. While Aunt Selina was talking suffrage 
to Anne—who said she had always been tremen- 
dously interested in the subject, and if women got 
the suffrage would they be allowed to vote?—lI 
slipped back to the dining-room. 

The table was laid for dinner, but Flannigan was 
not in sight. I could hear voices from somewhere, 
faint voices that talked rapidly, and after a while I 
located the sounds under my feet. The men were all 
in the basement, and something must have happened. 
I flew back to the basement stairs, to meet Mr. Har- 
bison at the foot. He was grimy and dusty, with 
streaks of coal dust over his face, and he had been 
examining his revolver. I was just in time to see 
him slip it into his pocket. 

“What is the matter?” I demanded. “Is any one 
hurt?” | 

“No one,” he said. coolly. ‘‘We’ve been cleaning 


out the furnace.” 


255, 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


“With a revolver! How interesting—and un- 
usual!’’ I said dryly, and slipped past him as he 
barred the way. He was not pleased; I heard him 
mutter something and come rapidly after me, but I 
had the voices as a guide, and I was not going to be 
turned back like a child. The men had gathered 
around a low stone arch in the furnace-room, and 
were looking down a short flight of steps, into a sort 
of vault, evidently under the pavement. A faint 
light came from a small grating above, and there 
was a close, musty smell in the air. 

“T tell you it must have been last night,’ Dallas 
was saying. ‘‘Wilson and I were here before we 
went to bed, and I'll swear that hole was not there 
then=* 

“Tt was not there this morning, sir,” Flannigan 
insisted. “It has been made during the day.” 

‘‘And it could not have been done this afternoon,” 
Mr. Harbison said quietly. “I was fussing with the 
telephone wire down here. I would have heard the 
noise.” 


256 


SUSPICION AND DISCORD 


Something in his voice made me look at him, and 
certainly his expression was unusual. He was 
watching us all intently while Dallas pointed out to 
me the cause of the excitement. From the main 
floor of the furnace-room, a flight of stone steps 
surmounted by an arch led into the coal cellar, be- 
neath the street. The coal cellar was of brick, with 
a cement floor, and in the left wall there gaped an 
opening about three feet by three, leading into a cav- 
ernous void, perfectly black—evidently a similar 
vault belonging to the next house. 

The whole place was ghostly, full of shadows, 
shivery with possibilities. It was Mr. Harbison 
finally who took Jim’s candle and crawled through 
the aperture. We waited in dead silence, listening 
to his feet crunching over the coal beyond, watching 
the faint yellow light that came through the ragged 
opening in the wall. Then he came back and called 
through to us. 

“Place is locked, over here,” he said. ‘‘Heavy 
oak door at the head of the steps. Whoever made 


257 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


that opening has done a prodigious amount of labor 
for nothing.” 

The weapon, a crowbar, lay on the ground beside 
the bricks, and he picked it up and balanced it on his 
hand. Dallas’ florid face was almost comical in his 
bewilderment; as for Jimmy—he slammed a piece 
of slag at the furnace and walked away. At the 
door he turned around. : 

“Why don’t you accuse me of it?” he asked bit- 
terly. ‘Maybe you could find a lump of coal in my 
pockets if you searched me.” : 

He stalked up the stairs then and left us. Dallas 
and I went up together, but we did not talk. There 
seemed to be nothing to say. Not until I had closed 
and locked the door of my room did I venture to 
look at something that I carried in the palm of my 
hand. It was a watch, not running—a gentleman’s 
flat gold watch, and it.had been hanging by its fob 
to a nail in the bricks beside the aperture. ! 

In the back of the watch were the initials T. H. H. 
and the picture of a girl, cut from a newspaper. 

It was my picture. | 

| 258 


CHAPTER XVI 


I FACE FLANNIGAN 





DINNER waited that night while 
- everybody went to the coal cel- 
lar and stared at the hole in the 


wall, and watched while Max 


took a tracing of it and of some 
footprints in the coal dust on 
the other side, 
, I did not go. I went into the 
library with the guilty watch in a 
fold of my gown, and found Mr. Harbison there, 
staring through the February gloom at the blank 
wall of the next house, and quite unconscious of the 
reporter with a drawing pad just below him in the 
area-way. I went over and closed the shutters be- 
~ fore his very eyes, but even then he did not move. 
“Will you be good enough to turn around?” I 
demanded at last. 


250 





K ; A\\ \ \\\ \ 
AYN ea 
x "\ aa 
\\ q Wy 
, 


I WAS CRYING; I ALWAYS DO WHEN I AM ANGRY 


I FACE FLANNIGAN 


“Oh!” he said wheeling. “Are you here?” 

There wasn’t any reply to that, so I took the 
watch and placed it on the library table between us. 
The effect was all that I had hoped. He stared at it 
for an instant, then at me, and with his hand out- 
stretched for it, stopped. 

“Where did you find it?” he asked. I couldn't 
understand his expression. He looked embarrassed, 
but not at all afraid. 

“T think you know, Mr. Harbison,” I retorted. 

“T wish I did. ‘You opened it?” 

af i 

We stood looking at each other across the table. 
It was his glance that wavered. 

“About the picture—of you,” he said at last. 
“Vou see, down there in South America, a fellow _ 
hasn’t much to do in the evenings, and a—a chum of 
mine and I—we were awfully down on what we 
called the plutocrats, the—the leisure classes. And 
when that picture of yours came in the paper, we 
had—we had an argument. He said—” He 
stopped. 

207 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


“What did he say?” 

“Well, he said it was the picture of an empty- 
faced society girl.” 

“Oh!” IT exclaimed. 

“J—I maintained there were possibilities in the 
face.” He put both hands on the table, and, bend- 
ing forward, looked down at me. “‘Well, I was a 
fool, I admit. I said your eyes were kind and can- 
did,.in spite of that haughty mouth. You see, I 
said I was a fool.” 

“T think you are exceedingly rude,” I managed 
finally. “If you want to know where I found your 
watch, it was down in the coal cellar, And if you 
admit you are an idiot, I am not. I—I know all . 
about Bella’s bracelet—and the board on the roof, 
and—oh, if you would only leave—Anne’s necklace 
—on the coal, or somewhere—and get away—” 

My voice got beyond me then, and I dropped into 
a chair anid covered my face. JI could feel him star- 
ing at the back of my head. 

“Well, I’ll be—” something or other, he said final- 
ly, and then he turned on his heel and went out. 

262 


IT FACE FLANNIGAN 


By the time I got my eyes dry (yes, I was cry- 
ing; I always do when I am angry) I heard Jim 
coming: down-stairs, and I tucked the watch out of 
sight. Would any one have foreseen the trouble 
that watch would make! 

Jim was sulky. He dropped into a chair and 
stretched out his legs, looking gloomily at nothing. 
Then he got up and ambled into his den, closing the 
door behind him without having spoken a word. It 
- was more than human nature could stand. 

When I went into the den he was stretched on 
the davenport with his face buried in the cushions. 
He looked absolutely wilted, and every line of him 
was drooping. 

“Go on out, Kit,” he said, in a smothered voice. 
“Be a good girl and don’t follow me around.” 

“You are shameless!” I gasped. “Follow you! 
When you are hung around my neck like a—like 
a—’ Millstone was what I wanted to say, but I 
couldn’t think of it. 

He turned over and looked up from his cushions 
like an ill-treated and suffering cherub. 


263 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


“T’m done for, Kit,” he groaned. “Bella went up 
to the studio after we left, and investigated that 
corner.” 

“What did she find? The necklace?” I asked 
eagerly. He was too wretched to notice this. 

“No, that picture of you that I did last winter. 
She is crazy—she says she is going up-stairs and sit 
in Takahiro’s room and take smallpox and die.” 

“Fiddlesticks!”’ I said rudely, and somebody ham- 
mered on the door and opened it. 

“Pardon me for disturbing you,” Bella said, in 
her best dear-me-I’m-glad-I-knocked manner. “But 
—Flannigan says the dinner has not come.” 

“Good Lord!” Jim exclaimed. “I forgot to order 
the confounded dinner!” 

It was eight o’clock by that time, and as it took 
an hour at least after telephoning the order, every- 
body looked blank when they heard. The entire 
family, except Mr. Harbison, who had not appeared 
again, escorted Jim to the telephone and hung 
around hungrily, suggesting new dishes every min- 
ute. And then—he couldn’t raise Central. It was 


264 


I FACE FLANNIGAN 


fifteen minutes before we gave up, and stood staring 
at one another despairingly. 

“Call out of a window, and get one of those infer- 
nal reporters to do something useful for once,” Max 
suggested. But he was indignantly hushed. We 
would have starved first. Jim was peering into the 
transmitter and knocking the receiver against his 
hand, like a watch that had stopped. But nothing 
happened. Flannigan reported a box of breakfast 
food, two lemons, and a pineapple cheese, a com- 
bination that didn’t seem to lend itself to anything. 

We went back to the dining-room from sheer 
force of habit and sat around the table and looked 
at the lemonade Flannigan had made. Anne would 
talk about the salad her last cook had concocted, and 
Max told about a little town in Connecticut where 
the restaurant keeper smokes a corn-cob pipe while 
he cooks the most luscious fried clams in America. 
And Aunt Selina related that in her family they had 
a recipe for chicken smothered in cream. And then 
we sipped the weak lemonade and nibbled at the 
cheese. 


265 





SF SS = 





“yoU ARE HUNG ROUND MY NECK LIKE A MILLSTONE ” 


I FACE FLANNIGAN 


“To change this gridiron martyrdom,” Dallas 
said finally, “where’s Harbison? Still looking for 
his watch ?” 

“Watch!” Everybody said it in a different tone. 


9 


“Sure,” he responded. “Says his watch was 
taken last night from the studio. Better get. him 
down to take a squint at the telephone. Likely he 
canes it.” 

Flannigan was beside me with the cheese. And 
at that moment I felt Mr. Harbison’s stolen watch 
slip out of my girdle, slide greasily across my lap, 
and clatter to the floor. Flannigan stooped, but 
luckily it had gone under the table. To have had it 
picked up, to have had to explain how I got it, to see 
them try to ignore my picture pasted in it—oh, it 
was impossible! I put my foot over it. 

“Drop something?” Dallas asked perfunctorily, 
rising. Flannigan was still half kneeling. 

“A fork,” I said, as easily as I could, and the con- 
versation went on. But Flannigan knew, and I 
knew he knew. He watched my every movement 
like a hawk after that, standing just behind my 

267 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


chair. I dropped my useless napkin, to have it 
whirled up before it reached the floor. I said to 
Betty that my shoe buckle was loose, and actually 
got the watch in my hand, only to let it slip at the 
critical moment. Then they all got up and went 
sadly back to the library, and Flannigan and I faced 
each other. 

Flannigan was not a handsome man at any time, 
though up to then he had at least looked amiable. 
But now as I stood with my hand on the back of my 
chair, his face grew suddenly menacing. The silence 
was absolute: I was the guiltiest wretch alive, and 
opposite me the law towered and glowered, and held 
the yellow remnant of a pineapple cheese! And in 
the silence that wretched watch lay and ticked and 
ticked and ticked. Then Flannigan creaked over and 
closed the door into the hall, came back, picked up 
the watch, and looked at it. ) 

“You're unlucky, I’m thinkin’,”’ he said finally. 
“You've got the nerve all right, but you ain’t cute 
enough.” 

“I don’t know what you mean,” I quavered. 

268 


I FACE FLANNIGAN 


“Give me that watch to return to Mr. Harbison.” 

“Not on your life,” he retorted easily. “I give it 
back myself, like I did the bracelet, and—like I’m 
going to give back the necklace, if you'll act like a 
sensible little girl.” 

I could only choke. 

“It’s foolish, any way you look at it,” he persisted, 
“Here you are, lots of friends, folks that think 
you're all right. Why, I reckon there isn’t one of 
them that wouldn’t lend you money if you needed it 
so bad.” 

“Will you be still?’ I said furiously. “Mr. Har- 
bison left that watch—with me—an hour ago, Get 
him, and he will tell you so himself!” 

“Of course he would,” Flannigan conceded, look- 
ing at me with grudging approval. “He wouldn’t 
be what I think he is, if he didn’t lie up and down for 
you.” There were voices in the hall. Flannigan came 
closer. “An hour ago, you say. And he told me it 
was gone this morning! It’s a losing game, miss. 
I'll give you twenty-four hours and then—the neck- 
lace, if you please, miss.” 


269 


CHAPTER XVII 








A CLASH AND A KISS 


THE clash that came that even- 
ing had been threatening for 
=e =} some time. Take an immovable 
) f a body, represented by Mr. Har- 
iil ® bison and his square jaw, and 


Fay Wik, 
an 





an irresistible force, Jimmy and 
his weight, and there is bound 
ys to _be trouble. 

The real fault was Jim’s. He had 
gone entirely mad again over Bella, and thrown pru- 
dence to the winds. He mooned at her across the 
dinner-table, and waylaid her on the stairs or in the 
back halls, just to hear her voice when she ordered 
him out of the way. He telephoned for flowers and 
candy for her quite shamelessly, and he got out a 
book of photographs that they had taken on their 

270 





A CLASH AND A KISS 


wedding-journey, and kept it on the library table. 
The sole concession he made to our presumptive re- 
lationship was to bring me the responsibility for 
everything that went wrong, and his shirts for but- 
tons. 

The first I heard of the trouble was from Dal. 
He waylaid me in the hall after dinner that night, 
and his face was serious. 

“I’m afraid we can’t keep it up very long, Kit,” 
he said. “With Jim trailing Bella all over the 
house, and the old lady keener every day, it’s bound 
to come out somehow. And that isn’t all. Jim and 
Harbison had a set-to to-day—about you.” 

“About me!” I repeated. “Oh, I dare say I have 
been falling short again. What was Jim doing? 
Abusing me?” 

Dal looked cautiously over his shoulder, but no 
one was near. 

“Tt seems that the gentle Bella has been unusually 
beastly to-day to Jim, and—I believe she’s jealous 
of you, Kit. Jim followed her up to the roof before 
dinner with a box of flowers, and she tossed them 


271 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES . 


over the parapet. She said, I believe, that she didn’t 
want his flowers: he could buy them for you, and be 
damned to him, or some lady-like equivalent.” 

“Jim is a jellyfish,’ I said contemptuously. 
‘What did he say?” 

“He said he only cared for one woman, and that 
was Bella: that he never had really cared for you 
and never would, and that divorce courts were not 
unmitigated evils if they showed people the way to 
real happiness. Which wouldn’t amount to any- 
thing if Harbison had not been in the tent, trying to 
sleep!” | 

Dal did not know all the particulars, but it seems 
that relations between Jim and Mr. Harbison were 
' rather strained. Bella had left the roof and Jim 
and the Harbison man came face to face in the door 
of the tent. According to Dal, little had been said, 
but Jim, bound by his promise to me, could not ex- 
plain, and could only stammer something about be- 
ing an old friend of Miss Knowles. And Tom had 
replied shortly that it was none of his business, but 
that there were some things friendship hardly 


272 


PA, AND:A KISS 


justified, and tried to pass Jim. Jim was instantly 
enraged: he blocked the door to the roof and de- 
manded to know what the other man meant. There 
were two or three versions of the answer he got. 
The general purport was that Mr. Harbison had no 
desire to explain further, and that the situation was 
forced on him. But if he insisted—when a man 
systematically ignored and neglected his wife for 
some one else, there were communities where he 
would be tarred and feathered. 

“Meaning me?” Jim demanded, apoplectic. 

“The remark was a general one,’ Mr. Harbison 
retorted, “but if you wish to make a concrete appli- 
cation—!” 

Dal had gone up just then, and found them glar- 
ing at each other, Jim with his hands clenched at his 
sides, and Mr. Harbison with his arms folded and 
very erect. Dal took Jim by the elbow and led him 
down-stairs, muttering, and the situation was saved 
for the time. But Dal was not optimistic. 

“You can do a bit yourself, Kit” he finished. 
“Look more cheerful, flirt a little. You can do that 


273 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


without trying. Take Max on for a day or so: it 
would be charity anyhow. But don’t let Tom Har- 
bison take it into his head that you are grieving 
over Jim’s neglect, or he’s likely to toss him off the 
roof.” | 

“T have no reason to think that Mr. Harbison 
cares one way or the other about me,” I said primly. 
“You don’t think he’s—he’s in love with me, do 
you, Dal?’ JI watched him out of the corner of my 
eye, but he only looked amused. 

“In love with you!” he repeated. “Why bless 
_ your wicked little heart, no! He thinks you’re a 
married woman! It’s the principle of the thing he’s 
fighting for. If I had as much principle as he has, 
(?'d—ITd put it out at interest.” 

Max interrupted us just then, and asked if we 
knew where Mr. Harbison was. 

“Can't find him,” he said. “I’ve got the telephone 
together and have enough left over to make another. 
Where do you suppose Harbison hides the tools? 
Ym working with a corkscrew and two palette 


knives.” 


274 





A CLASH AND A KISS 


I heard nothing more of the trouble that night. 
Max went to Jim about it, and Jim said angrily that 
only a fool would interfere between a man and his 
wife—wives. Whereupon Max retorted: that a fool 
and his wives were soon parted, and left him. The 
two principals were coldly civil to each other, and 
smaller issues were lost as the famine grew more 
and more insistent. For famine it was. 

They worked.the rest of the evening, but the tele- 
phone refused to revive and every one was starving. 
Individually our pride was at low ebb, but col- 
lectively it was still formidable. So we sat around 
and Jim played Grieg with the soft stops on, and 
Aunt Selina went to bed. The weather had changed, 
and it was sleeting, but anything was better than the 
drawing-room. I was in a mood to battle with the 
elements or to cry—or both—so I slipped out, while 
Dal was reciting “Give me three grains of corn, 
mother,’ threw somebody’s overcoat over my shoul- 
ders, put on a man’s soft hat—Jim’s I think—and 
went up to the roof. | 

It was dark in the third floor hall, and I had to 


275 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


feel my way to the foot of the stairs. I went up quiet- 
ly, and turned the knob of the door to the roof. At 
first it would not open, and I could hear the wind 
howling outside. Finally, however, I got the door 
open a little and wormed my way through. It was 
not entirely dark out there, in spite of the storm. A 
faint reflection of the street lights made it possible 
to distinguish the outlines of the boxwood plants, 
swaying in the wind, and the chimneys and the tent. . 
And then—a dark figure disentangled itself from 
the nearest chimney and seemed to hurl itself at me. 
I remember putting out my hands and trying to say 
something, but the figure caught me roughly by the 
shoulders and knocked me back against the door- 
frame. From miles away a’ heavy voice was say- 
ing, “So I’ve got you!” and then the roof gave 
from under me, and I was floating out on the storm, 
and sleet was beating in my face, and the wind was 
whispering over and over, “Open your eyes, for 
God’s sake!’ 

I did open them after a while, and finally I made 
out that I was lying on the floor in the tent. The 

276 





ReG@eaon- AND A KISS 


lights were on, and I had a cold and damp feeling, 
and something wet was trickling down my neck. 

I seemed to be alone, but in a second somebody 
came into the tent, and I saw it was Mr. Harbison, 
and that he had a double handful of half melted 
snow. He looked frantic and determined, and only 
my sitting up quickly prevented my getting another 
snow bath. My neck felt queer and stiff, and I was 
very dizzy. When he saw that I was conscious he 
dropped the snow and stood looking down at me. 

“Do you know,” he said grimly, “that I very near- 
ly choked you to death a little while ago?” 

“Tt wouldn’t surprise me to be told so,” I said. 
“Do I know too much, or what is it, Mr. Harbi- 
son?” J felt terribly ill, but I would not let him see 
it. “It is queer, isn’t it—how we always select the 
roof for our little—differences?” He seemed to 
relax somewhat at my gibe. 

“T didn’t know it was you,” he explained shortly. 
“T was waiting for—some one, and in the hat you 
wore, and the coat, I mistook you. That’s all. Can 
you stand ?” 


277 


oH fy 


ni 





ci 


ONLY SITTING UP QUICKLY PREVENTED ANOTHER SNOW BATH 


A CLASH AND A KISS 


“No,” I retorted. I could, but his summary man- 
ner displeased me. The sequel, however, was rather 
amazing, for he stooped suddenly and picked me up, 
and the next instant we were out in the storm to- 
gether. At the door he stooped and felt for the knob. 

“Turn it,” he commanded. “I can’t reach it.” 

“T’l1 do nothing of the kind,” I said shrewishly. 
“Let me down; I can walk perfectly well.” 

He hesitated. Then he slid me slowly to my feet, 
but he did not open the door at once. “Are you 
afraid to let me carry you down those stairs, after 
-—Tuesday night?” he asked, very low. “You still 
think I did that?” 

I had never been less sure of it than at that mo- 
ment, but an imp of perversity made me retort, 
SY es. 

He hardly seemed to hear me. He stood looking 
‘down at me as I leaned against the door-frame. 

_ “Good Lord!’ he groaned. “To think that I 
might have killed you!’ And then—he stooped and 
suddenly kissed me. 

The next moment the door was open, and he was 


279 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


leading me down into the house. At the foot of the 
staircase he paused, still holding my hand, and faced 
me in the darkness. 

“T’m not sorry,” he said steadily. “I suppose I 
ought to be, but ’m not. Only—lI want you to 
know that I was not guilty—before. I didn’t intend 
to now. I am—almost as much surprised as you 
rere 

I was quite unable to speak, but I wrenched my 
hand loose. He stepped back to let me pass, and I 


went down the hall alone. 


280 


CHAPTER XVIII 








ITS ALL MY FAULT 


we DIDN’T go to the drawing-room 

\ again. I went into my own room 
\W. and sat in the dark, and tried to be 
Nice Sy furiously angry, and only suc- 
Z <s, ceeded in feeling queer and tingly. One 
thing was absolutely certain: not the same man, but 
two different men had kissed me on the stairs to the 
roof, It sounds rather horrid and discriminating, 
but there was all the difference in the world. 

But then—who had? And for whom had Mr. 
Harbison been waiting on the roof? “Did you know 
that I nearly choked you to deatli a few minutes 
ago?’ Then he rather expected to finish Beotyrd 
in that way! Who? Jim, probably. It was strange, 
too, but suddenly I realized that no matter how 
many suspicious things I mustered up against him 

281 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


—and there were plenty—down in my heart I didn’t 
believe him guilty of anything, except this last and 
unforgivable offense. Whoever was trying to leave 
the house had taken the necklace, that seemed clear, 
unless Max was still foolishly trying to break quar- 
antine and create one of the sensations he so dearly 
loves. This was a new idea, and some things up- 
held it, but Max had been playing bridge when I was 
kissed on the stairs, and there was still left that ridic- 
ulous incident of the comfort. 

Bella came up after I had gone to bed, and turned 
on the light to brush her hair. 

“Tf I don’t leave this mausoleum soon, I'll be car- 
ried out,” she declared. “You in bed, Lollie Mercer 
and Dal flirting, Anne hysterical, and Jim making 
his will in the den! ‘You will have to take Aunt 
Selina to-night, Kit; I’m all in.” 

“Tf you'll put her to bed, I’ll keep her there,” I 
conceded, after some parley. 

“You're a dear.” Bella came back from the door. 
“Look here, Kit, you know Jim pretty well. Don’t 
you think he looks ill? Thinner?” 


282 


Pee ALG MY FAULT 


“He’s a wreck,” I said soberly. “You have a lot 
to answer for, Bella.” 

Bella went over to the cheval glass and looked in 
it. “J avoid him all I can,” she said, posing. ‘“He’s 
awfully funny; he’s so afraid I’ll think he’s serious 
about you. He can’t realize that for me he simply 
doesn’t exist.” 

Well, I took Aunt Selina, and about two o’clock, 
while I was in my first sleep, I woke to find her 
standing beside me, tugging at my arm. 

“There’s somebody in the house,”’ she whispered. 
“Thieves !” 

“If they’re in they’ll not get out to-night,” I said. 

“T tell you, I saw a man skulking on the stairs,” 
she insisted. 

I got up ungraciously enough, and put on my 
dressing-gown. Aunt Selina, who had her hair in 
crimps, tied a veil over her head, and together we 
went to the head of the stairs. Aunt Selina leaned 
far over and peered down. | 

“He’s in the library,” she whispered. “I can see 
a light.” 

283 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


The lust of battle was in Aunt Selina’s eye. She 
girded her robe about her and began to descend the 
stairs cautiously. We went through the hall and 
stopped at the library door. It was empty, but from 
the den beyond came a hum of voices and the cheer- 
ful glow of fire-light. 4 realized the situation then, 
but it was too late. 

“Then why did you kiss her in the dining-room ?” 
Bella was saying in her clear, high tones. “You did, 
didn’t you?” 

“Tt was only her hand,” Jim, desperately explain- 
ing. “I’ve got to pay her some attention, under the 
circumstances. And I give you my word, I was 
thinking of you when I did it.” The wretch! 

Aunt Selina drew her breath in suddenly. 

“T am thinking of marrying Reggie Wolfe.” This 
was Bella, of course. ‘“He wants me to. He’s a dear 
boy.” 

“Tf you do, I will kill him.” 

“T am so very lonely,” Bella sighed. We could 
hear the creak of Jim’s shirt bosom that showed that 
he had sighed also. Aunt Selina had gripped me by 

284 


Pesan MY FAULT 


the arm, and I could hear her breathing hard beside 
me. 

“It’s only Jim,’ I whispered. ‘“I—I don’t want 
to hear any more.” 

But she clutched me firmly, and the next thing we 
heard was another creak, louder and— 

“Get up! Get up off your knees this instant!” 
Bella was saying frantically. ‘Some one might 
come in.” 

“Don’t send me away,” Jim said in a smothered 
voice. “Every one in the house is asleep, and I love 
you, dear.” 

Aunt Selina swallowed hard in the darkness. 

“You have no right to make love to me,” Bella. 
“It’s—it’s highly improper, under the circum- 
stances.” 

And then Jim: “You swallow a camel and stick 
ata gnat. Why did you meet me here, if you didn’t 
expect me to make love to you? I’ve stood for a 
lot, Bella, but this foolishness will have to end. 
Either you love me—or you don’t. I’m desperate.” 
He drew a long, forlorn breath. 

285 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


“Poor old Jim !? This was Bella. A pause. 
Then—“Let my hand alone!’’ Also Bella. 

“Tt is my hand!’—Jim’s most fatuous tone. 
“There is where you wore my ring. ‘There’s the 
mark still.” Sounds of Jim kissing Bella’s ring- . 
finger. ‘What did you do with it? Throw it 
away?’ More sounds. 

Aunt Selina crossed the library swiftly, and again | 
T followed. Bella was sitting in a low chair by the 
fire, looking at the logs, in the most exquisite neg- 
ligée of pink chiffon and ribbon. Jim was on his 
knees, staring at her adoringly, and me both 
her hands. 

“T’ll tell you a secret,” Bella was saying, looking 
as coy as she knew how—which was considerable. 
“I—I still. wear it, on a chain around my neck.” 

On a chain around her neck!. Bella, who is dé- 
coletté whenever it is allowable, and more than is 
proper! 

That was the limit of Aunt Selina’s endurance. 
Still holding me, she stepped through the doorway 
and into the firelight, a fearful figure. 

286 


feo ALL MY FAULT 


Jim saw her first. He went quite white and strug-. 
gled to get up, smiling a sickly smile. Bella, after 
her first surprise, was superbly indifferent. She 
glanced at us, raised her eyebrows, and then looked 
at the clock. 

“More victims of insomnia!” she said. ‘“Won’t 
you come in? Jim, pull up a chair by the fire for 
your aunt.” 

Aunt Selina opened her mouth twice, like a fish, 
before she could speak. Then— 

“James, I demand that that woman leave the 
house!” she said hoarsely. 

Bella leaned back and yawned. 

“Tames, shall I go?” she asked amiably. 

“Nonsense,” Jim said, pulling himself together as 
best he could. “Look here, Aunt Selina, you know 
she can’t go out, and what’s more, I1—don’t want 
her to go.” 

“You—what?” Aunt Selina screeched, taking a 
“step forward. “You have the audacity to. say such 
a thing to me!” 

Bella leaned over and gave the fire log a punch. 


¢ 


287 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


“T was just saying that he shouldn’t say such 
things to me, either,” she remarked pleasantly. “I’m 
afraid you'll take cold, Miss Caruthers. Wouldn't 
you like a hot sherry flip?” 

Aunt Selina gasped. Then she sat down heavily 
on one of the carved teakwood chairs. 


A) 


“He said he loved you; I heard him,” she said 
weakly. “He—he was going to put his arm around 
you!” 

“Habit!” Jim put in, trying to smile. “You see, 
Aunt Selina, it’s—well, it’s a habit I got into some 
time ago, and I—my arm does it without my think- 
ing about it.” 

“Habit!” Aunt Selina repeated, her voice thick 
with passion. Then she turned tome, “Go to your 
room at once!” she said in her most awful tone. 
“Go to your room and leave this—this shocking af- 
fair to me.” 

But if she had reached her limit, so had I. If 
Jim chose to ruin himself, it was not my fault. Any 
one with common sense would have known at least 
to close the door before he went down on his knees, 


288 


Peo ALL MY “FAULT 


no matter to whom. So when Aunt Selina turned 
on me and pointed in the direction of the staircase, 
I did not move. 

“I am perfectly wide awake,’ I said coldly. “T 
shall go to bed when I am entirely ready, and not 
before. And as for Jim’s conduct, I do not know 
much about the conventions in such cases, but if he 
wishes to embrace Miss Knowles, and she wants 
him to, the situation is interesting, but hardly 
novel.” 

Aunt Selina rose slowly and drew the folds of 
her dressing-gown around her, away from the con- 
tamination of my touch. 

“Do you know what you are saying?” she de- 
manded hoarsely. 

“T do.” I was quite white and stiff from my 
knees up, but below I was wavery. I glanced at 
Jim for moral support, but he was looking idola- 
trously at Bella. As for her, quite suddenly she had 
dropped her mask of indifference: her face was 
strained and anxious, and there were deep circles I 
had not seen before, under her eyes. And it was 


289 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


Bella who finally threw herself into the breach— 
the family breach. 

“Tt is all my fault, Miss Caruthers,” she said, 
stepping between Aunt Selina and myself. “I have 
been a blind and wicked woman, and I have almost 
wrecked two lives.” 

Two! What of mine? 

“You see,” she struggled on, against the glint in 
Aunt Selina’s eyes, “I—I did not realize how 
much I cared, until it was too late. I did so many 
things that were cruel and wrong—oh, Jim, Jim!” 

She turned and buried her head on his shoulder 
and cried; real tears. I could hardly believe that it 
was Bella. And Jim put both his arms around her 
and almost cried, too, and looked nauseatingly happy 
with the eye he turned to Bella, and scared to death 
out of the one he kept on Aunt Selina. 


She turned on me, as of course I knew she would. 


—_ 


“That,” she said, pointing at Jim and Bella, “that 


shameful picture is due to your own indifference. I 
am not blind: I have seen how you rejected all his 


9) 


loving advances.” Bella drew away from Jim, but 


290 


Pes ALL MY BPAULT 


he jerked her back. “If anything in the world would 
reconcile me to divorce, it is this unbelievable situa- 
ation. James, are you shameless?” 

But James was and didn’t care who knew it. And 
as there was nothing else to do, and no one else to” 
_do it, I stood very straight against the door-frame, 
and told the whole miserable story from the very 
beginning. I told how Dal and Jim had persuaded 
me, and how [ had weakened and found it was too 
late, and how Bella had come in that night, when 
she had no business to come, and had sat down in 
the basement kitchen on my hands and almost 
turned me into a raving maniac. As I went on I 
_ became fluent: my sense of injury grew on me. I 
made it perfectly clear that I hated them all, and 
that when people got divorces they ought to know 
their own minds and stay divorced. And at that a 
great light broke on Aunt Selina, who hadn’t un- 
derstood until that minute. 

In view of her principles, she might have been 
expected to turn on Jim and Bella, and disinherit 
them, and cast them out, figuratively, with the 


291 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


flaming sword of her tongue. But she did not! She 
turned on me in the most terrible way, and asked me 
how I dared to come between husband and wife, be- 
cause divorce or no divorce, whom God hath joined 
together, and so on. And when Jim picked up his 
courage in both hands and tried to interfere, she 
pushed him back with one hand while she pointed 
the other at me and called me a Jezebel. 


292 


CHAPTER XIX 
THE HARBISON MAN 


i erm 4 SHE talked for an hour, having 


got between me and the door, and 









i 


sb % sf she scolded Jim and Bella thoroughly. 


Vi Chall Lh 


=i = 
43 
Fy 


|, But they did not hear it, being occupied 
ih with each other, sitting side by side meek- 
peel ly on the divan with Jim holding Bella’s 





hand under a cushion. She said they would 


have to be very good to make up for all the 


deception, but it was perfectly clear that it was a 
relief to her to find that I didn’t belong to her per- 
manently, and as I have said before, she was crazy 
about Bella. 

I sat back in a chair and grew comfortably drowsy 
in the monotony of her voice. It was a name that 
brought me to myself with a jerk. 

“Mr. Harbison!’ Aunt Selina was saying. “Then 


bring him down at once, James. I want no more 


293 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


deception. There is no use cleaning a house and 
leaving a dirty corner.” 

“It will not be necessary for me to stay and see it 
swept,” I said, mustering the rags she had left of my 
self-respect, and trying to pass her. But she planted 
herself squarely before me. 

“You can not stir up a dust like this, young 
woman, and leave other people to sneeze in it,” she 
said grimly. And I stayed. | 

I sat, very small, on a chair in a corner. I felt 
like Jezebel, or whatever her name was, and now 
the Harbison man was coming, and he was going to 
see me stripped of my pretensions to domesticity 
and of a husband who neglected me. He was going 
to see me branded a living lie, and he would hate 
me because I had put him in a ridiculous position. 
He was just the sort to resent being ridiculous. 

Jim brought him down in a dressing-gown and a 
state of bewilderment, It was plain that the mem- 
ory of the afternoon still rankled, for he was very 
short with Jim and inclined to resent the whole 
thing. The clock in the hall chimed half after three 


294 


THE HARBISON MAN 


as they came down the stairs, and I heard Mr. Har- 
bison stumble over something in the darkness and 
say that if it was a joke, he wasn’t in the humor for 
it. To which Jim retorted that it wasn’t anything 
resembling a joke, and for Heaven’s sake not to 
walk on his feet: he couldn’t get around the furni- 
ture any faster. 

At the door of the den Mr. Harbison stopped, 
blinking in the light. Then, when he saw us, he 
tried to back himself and his dishabille out into the 
obscurity of the library. But Aunt Selina was too 
quick for him. . 

“Come in,” she called, “I want you, young man. 
It seems that there are only two fools in the house, 
and you are one.” 

He straightened at that and looked bewildered, 
but he tried to smile. 

“T thought I was the only one,” he said. “Is it 
_ possible that there is another ?” 

“T am the other,” she announced. I think she ex- 
pected him to say “Impossible,’’ but, whatever he 


was, he was never banal. 


295 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


“Ts that so?” he asked politely, trying to be inter- 
ested and to understand at the same time. He had 
not seen me. He was gazing fixedly at Bella, 
languishing on the divan and watching him with 
lowered lids, and he had given Jim a side glance of 
contempt. But now he saw me and he colored 
under his tan. His neck blushed furiously, being 
much whiter than his face. He kept his eyes on 
mine, and I knew that he was mutely asking forgive- 
ness. But the thought of what was coming par- 
alyzed me. My eyes were glued to his as they had 
been that first evening when he had called me “Mrs. _ 
Wilson,” and after an instant he looked away, and 
his face was set and hard. 

“It seems that we have all been playing a little 
comedy, Mr. Harbison,” Aunt Selina began, nasally 
sarcastic. “Or rather, you and I have been the audi-~ 
ence. The rest have played.” 

“I—I don’t think I understand,” he said slowly. 
“T have seen very little comedy.” 

“It was not well planned,” Aunt Selina retorted 
tartly. “The idea was good, but the young person 

296 


THE HARBISON MAN 


who was playing the part of Mrs. Wilson—over- 
acted.” 

“Oh, come, Aunt Selina,” Jim protested, “Kit 
was coaxed and cajoled into this thing. Give me 
fits if you like; I deserve all I get. But let Kit alone 
—she did it for me.” 

Bella looked over at me and smiled nastily. 

“T would stop doing things for Jim, Kit,’ she 
said. “It is so unprofitable.” 

But Mr. Harbison harked back to Aunt Selina’s 
speech. 

“Playing the part of Mrs. Wilson!” he repeated. 
“Do you mean— ?” 

“Exactly. Playing the part. She is not Mrs. 
Wilson. It seems that that honor belonged at one 
time to Miss Knowles. I believe such things are not 
unknown in New York, only why in the name of 
sense does a man want to divorce a woman and then 
meet her at two o’clock in the morning to kiss the 
place where his own wedding-ring used to rest?” 

Jim fidgeted. Bella was having spasms of mirth 
to herself, but the Harbison man did not smile. He 


2097 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


stood for a moment looking at the fire: then he 
thrust his hands deep into the pockets of his dress- 
ing-gown, and stalked over to me. He did not care 
that the others were watching and listening. 

“Is it true?” he demanded, staring down at me. 
“You are not Mrs. Wilson? You are not married at 
all? All that about being neglected—and loathing 
him, and all that on the roof—there was no founda- 
tion of truth ?”’ 

I could only shake my head without looking up. 
There was no defense to be made. Oh, I deserved 
the scorn in his voice. 

“They—they persuaded you, I suppose, and it 
was to help somebody? It was not a practical — 
joke?” 
“No.” T rallied a little spirit at that. It had been | 
anything but a joke. 

He drew a long breath. 

“T think I understand,” he said slowly, “but— 
you could have saved me something. I must have 
given you all a great deal of amusement.” 

“Oh, no,” I protested. “I—I want to tell you—” 

298 


THE HARBISON MAN 


But he deliberately left me and went over to the 

».door. There he turned and looked down at Aunt 

Selina. He was a little white, but there was no pas- 
sion in his face. 

“Thank you for telling me all this, Miss Caru- 
thers,” he said easily. “Now that you and I know, 
I’m afraid the others will miss their little diversion. 
Good night.” 

Oh, it was all right for Jim to laugh and say that 
he was only huffed a little and would be over it by 
morning. I knew better. There was something 
queer in his face as he went out. He did not even 
glance in my direction.. He had said very little, but 
he had put me as effectually in the wrong as if he 
had not kissed me—deliberately kissed me—that 
very evening, on the roof. 

I did not go to sleep again. I lay wretchedly think- 
ing things over and trying to remember who Jezebel 
was, and toward morning I distinctly heard the 
knob of the door turn. I mistrusted my ears, how- 
ever, and so I got up quietly and went over in the 


darkness. There was no sound outside, but when I 
299 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


put my hand on the knob I felt it move under my 
fingers. The counter pressure evidently alarmed 
whoever it was, for the knob was released and noth- 
ing more happened. But by this time anything so 
uncomplicated as the fumbling of a knob at night 
had no power to disturb me. I went back to bed. 


300 


CHAPTER XX 


BREAKING OUT IN A NEW PLACE 


CAN 








HUNGER roused everybody 
) early the next morning, Friday. 
Leila Mercer had discovered a 
box of bonbons that she had for- 
gotten, and we divided them 
around. Aunt Selina asked 

= jx@ for the candied fruit and got 

a SS it—quite a third of the box. 
We gathered in the lower hall and on the stairs and 
nibbled nauseating sweets while Mr. Harbison ex- 
amined the telephone. 

He did not glance in my direction. Betty and Dal 
were helping him, and he seemed very cheerful. 
Max sat with me on the stairs. Mr. Harbison had 
just unscrewed the telephone box from the wall and 
was squinting into it, when Bella came down-stairs. 


301 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


It was her first appearance, but as she was always 
late, nobody noticed. When she stopped, just above 
us on the stairs, however, we looked up, and she was 
holding to the rail and trembling perceptibly. 

“Mr. Harbison, will you—can you come up- 
stairs?’ she asked. Her voice was strained, almost 
reedy, and her lips were white. 

Mr. Harbison stared up at her, with the telephone 
box in his hands. 

“Why—er—certainly,” he said, “but, unless it’s 
very important, I’d like to fix this talking machine. 
We want to make a food record.” 

“T’d like to break a food record,” Max put in, but 
Bella created a diversion by sitting down suddenly 
on the stair just above us, and burying her face in 
her handkerchief. | 

“Jim is sick,” she said, with a sob. “He—he 
doesn’t want anything to eat, and his head aches. 
He—said for me—to go away and let him die!” 

Dal dropped the hammer immediately, and Lollie 
Mercer sat petrified, with a bonbon half-way to her 
mouth. For, of course, it was unexpected, finding 

302 | 


s. 


BREAKING OUT IN A NEW PLACE 


sentiment of any kind in Bella, and none of them 
knew about the scene in the den in the small hours 
of the morning. 

“Sick!” Aunt Selina said, from a hall chair. 
“Sick! Where?” 

“All over,” Bella quavered. ‘His poor head is 
hot, and he’s thirsty, but he doesn’t want anything 
but water.” 

“Great Scott!” Dal said suddenly. “Suppose he 
should—Bella, are you telling us all his symptoms ?” 

Bella put down her handkerchief and got up. 
From her position on the stairs she looked down on 
us with something of her old haughty manner. 

“If he is ill, you may blame yourselves, all of 
you,” she said cruelly. “You taunted him with being 
—fat, and laughed at him, until he stopped eating 
the things he should eat. And he has been exercising 
—on the roof, until he has worn himself out. And 
now—he is ill. He—he has a rash.” 

Everybody jumped at that, and we instinctively 
moved away from Bella. She was quite cold and 
scornful by that time. 


393 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


“A rash!” Max exclaimed. “What sort of rash?” 

“T did not see it,” Bella said with dignity, and 
turning she went up the stairs. 

There was a great deal of excitement, and nobody 
except Mr. Harbison was willing to go near Jim. 
He went up at once with Bella, while Max and Dal 
sat cravenly down-stairs and wondered if we would 
all take it, and Anne told about a man she knew who 
had it, and was deaf and dumb and blind when he 
recovered. 

Mr. Harbison came down after a while, and said 
that the rash was there, right enough, and that Jim 
absolutely refused to be quarantined ; that he insisted 
that he always got a rash from early strawberries 
and that if he did have anything, since they were so 
__ touchy he hoped they would all get it. If they locked 
him in he would kick the door down. 

We had a long conference in the hall, with Bella 
sitting red-eyed and objecting to every suggestion 
we made. And finally we arranged to shut Jim up 
in one of the servants’ bedrooms with a sheet wrung 


out of disinfectant hung over the door. Bella said she 


304 


BREAKING OUT IN A NEW PLACE 


would sit outside in the hall and read to him through 
the closed door, so finally he gave a grudging con- 
sent. But he was in an awful humor. Max and 
Dal put on rubber gloves and helped him over, and 
they said afterward that the way he talked was 
fearful. And there was a telephone in the maid’s 
room, and he kept asking for things every five min- 
utes, 

When the doctor came he said it was too early to 
tell positively, and he ordered him liquid diet and 
said he would be back that evening. 

Which—the diet—takes me back to the famine. 
After they had moved Jim, Mr. Harbison went back 
to the telephone, and found everything as it should 
be. So he followed the telephone wire, and the rest 
followed him. I did not: he had systematically ig- 
nored me all morning, after having dared to kiss me 
the night before. And any other man I knew, after 
looking at me the way he had looked a dozen times, 
would have been at least reasonably glad to find me 
free and unmarried. But it was clear that he was 


not: I wondered if he was the kind of man who al- 
305 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


ways makes love to the other man’s wife and runs 
like mad when she is left a widow, or gets a divorce. 
And just when I had decided that I hated him, 


and that there was one man I knew who would 


never make love to a woman whom he thought mar- 
ried and then be very dignified and aloof when he 
found she wasn’t, I heard what was wrong with the 
telephone wire. 

It had been cut! Cut through with a pair of sil- 
ver manicure scissors from the dressing-table in 
Bella’s room, where Aunt Selina slept! The wire 
had been clipped where it came into the house, just 


under a window, and the scissors still lay on the sill. 


It was mysterious enough, but no one was inter- | 


ested in the mystery just then. We wanted food, 
and wanted it at once. Mr. Harbison fixed the wire, 
and the first thing we did, of course, was to order 
something to eat. Aunt Selina went to bed just 
after luncheon with indigestion, to the relief of 
every one in the house. She had been most unpleas- 
ant all morning. 

When she found herself ill, however, she insisted 

306 


 — 


BREAKING OUT IN A NEW PLACE 


on having Bella, and that made trouble at once. We 
found Bella with her cheek against the door into 
_ Jim’s room, looking maudlin while he shouted love 
messages to her from the other side. At first she re- 
fused to stir, but after Anne and Max had tried and 
failed, the rest of us went to her in a body and im- 
plored her. We said Aunt Selina was in awful shape 
—which she was, as to temper—and that she had 
thrown a mustard plaster at Anne, which was true. 

So Bella went, grumbling, and Jim was a maniac. 
We had not thought it would be so bad for Bella, 
but Aunt Selina fell asleep soon ‘after she took 
charge, holding Bella’s hand, and slept for three 
hours and never let go! 

About two that afternoon the sun came out, and 
the rest of us went tothe roof. The sleet had melted 
and the air was fairly warm. Two housemaids dust- 
ing rugs on the top of the next house came over and 
stared at us, and somebody in an automobile down 
on Riverside Drive stood up and waved at us. It 
was very cheerful and hopelessly lonely. 


I stayed on the roof after the others had gone, 
307 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


and for some time I thought I was alone: After 
a while, I got a whiff of smoke, and then I saw Mr. 
Harbison far over in the corner, one foot on the 
parapet, moodily smoking a pipe. He was gazing 
out over the river, and paying no attention to me. 
This was natural, considering that I had hardly 
spoken to him all day. 

I would not let him drive me away, so I sat still, 
and it grew darker and colder. He filled his pipe 
now and then, but he never looked in my direction. 
Finally, however, as it grew very dusk, he knocked 
the ashes out and came toward me. 

“I am going to make a request, Miss McNair,” 
he said evenly. “Please keep off the roof after sun- 
set. There are—reasons.” I had risen and was pre- 
paring to go down-stairs. 

“Unless I know the reasons, I refuse to do any- 
thing of the kind,” I retorted. He bowed. 

“Then the door will be kept locked,” he rejoined, 
and opened it for me. He did not follow me, but 
stood watching until I was down, and I heard him 
close the roof door firmly behind me. 

308 


CHAPTER XXI 


A BAR OF SOAP 







under the door into Jim’s room when 
Bella came running down the stairs. 
Dal was reading the first verse when 
she came. ‘‘Listen to this, Bella,”’ he said 


({ 


S/ 





triumphantly : 


“There was a fat artist named Jas, 
Who cruelly called his friends nas. 
When, altho’ shut up tight, 
He broke out over night 
With a rash that is maddening, he clas.” 


Then he caught sight of Bella’s face as she stood 


in the doorway, and stopped. 
“Jim is delirious!” she announced tragically. 


309 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


“You shut him in there all alone and now he’s de- 
lirious. J’ll never forgive any of you.” 

“Delirious !’’ everybody exclaimed. 

“He was sane enough when I took him his chick- 
en broth,” Mr. Harbison said. “He was almost 
— fluent.” 

“He is stark, staring crazy,’ Bella insisted hys- 
terically. “I—I locked the door carefully when I 
went down to my dinner, and when I came up it— 
it was unlocked, and Jim was babbling on the bed, 
‘ with a sheet over his face. He—he says the house 
is haunted and he wants all the men to come. up and 
sit in the room with him.” 

“Not on your life,” Max said. “I am young, and 
my career has only begun. I don’t intend to be cut 
off in the flower of my youth. But I'll tell you 
what I will do; T’ll take hima drink. I can tie ittoa 
pole or something.” 

But Mr. Harbison did not smile. He was 
thoughtful for a minute. Then: 

“T don’t believe he is delirious,” he said quietly, 
“and I wouldn’t be surprised if he has happened on 


310 


a) DAR OF SOAP 


something that—will be of general interest. J think 
I will stay with him to-night.” 

After that, of course, none of the others would 
confess that he was afraid, so with the South Amer- 
ican leading, they all went up-stairs. The women 
of the party sat on the lower steps and listened, but 
everything was quiet. Now and then we could 
hear the sound of voices, and after a while there 
was a rapid slamming of doors and the sound of 
some one running down to the second floor. Then 
quiet again. 

None of us felt talkative. Bella had followed the 
men up and had been put out, and sat sniffling by 
herself in the den. Aunt Selina was working over 
a jig-saw puzzle in the library, and declaring that 
some of it must be lost. Anne and Leila Mercer 
_ were embroidering, and Betty and I sat idle, our 
hands in our laps. The whole atmosphere of the 
house was mysterious. Anne told over again of the 
strange noises the night her necklace was stolen. 
Betty asked me about the time when the comfort 


slipped from under my fingers. And when, in the 


AI 





3 


BELLA SAT SNIFFLING BY HERSELF IN THE DEN 


A BAK OF SOAP 


midst of the story, the telephone rang, we all jumped 
and shrieked. 

In an hour or so they sent for Flannigan, and he 
went up-stairs. He came down again soon, how- 
ever, and returned with something over his arm that 
looked like a rope. It seemed to be made of all 
kinds of things tied together, trunk straps, clothes- 
line, bed sheets, and something that Flannigan 
pointed to with rage and said he hadn’t been able 
to keep his clothes on all day. He refused to ex- 
plain further, however, and trailed the nondescript 
article up the stairs. We could only gaze after him 
and wonder what it all meant. 

The conclave lasted far into the night. The 
feminine contingent went to bed, but not to sleep. 
Some time after midnight, Mr. Harbison and Max 
went down-stairs and I could hear them rattling 
around testing windows and burglar alarms. But 
finally every one settled down and the rest of the 
night was quiet. , 

Betty Mercer came into my room the next morn- 


ing, Sunday, and said Anne Brown wanted me. I 
313 


WHEN A MAN. MARRIES 


went over at once, and Anne was sitting up in bed, 
crying. Dal had slipped out of the room at day- 
light, she said, and hadn’t come back. He had 
thought she was asleep, but she wasn’t, and she . 
knew he was dead, for nothing ever made Dal get 
up on Sunday before noon. 

There was no one moving in the house, and I 
hardly knew what to do. It was Betty who said she 
would go up and rouse Mr. Harbison and Max, who 
had taken Jim’s place in the studio. She started out 
bravely enough, but in a minute we heard her flying 
back. Anne grew perfectly white. 

““He’s lying on the upper stairs!’ Betty cried, and 
we all ran out. It was quite true. Dal was lying 
on the stairs in a bath-robe, with one of Jim’s In- 
dian war-clubs in his hand. And he was sound 
asleep. 

He looked somewhat embarrassed when he roused 
and saw us standing around. He said he was going 
to play a practical joke on somebody and fell asleep 
in the middle of it. And Anne said he wasn’t even 


an intelligent liar, and went back to bed in a temper, 


314 


Pyeonn OF SOAP 


But Betty came in with me, and we sat and looked 
at each other and didn’t say much. The situation 
was beyond us. 

The doctor let Jim out the next day, there having 
been nothing the matter with him but a stomach 
rash. But Jim was changed; he mooned around 

Bella, of course, as before, but he was abstracted at 
: times, and all that day—Sunday—he wandered off 
by himself, and one would come across him unex- 
pectedly in the basement or along some of the un- 
used back halls. 

Aunt Selina held service that morning. Jim said 
that he always had a prayer-book, but that he 
couldn’t find anything with so many people in the 
house. So Aunt Selina read some religious poetry 
out of the newspapers, and gave us a valuable talk 
on Deception versus Honesty, with me as the illus- 
tration. ) 

Almost everybody took a nap after luncheon. I 
stayed in the den and read Ibsen, and felt very 
mournful. And after Hedda had shot herself, I lay 


down on the divan and cried a little—over Hedda; 


315 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


she was young and it was such a tragic ending—and 
then I fell asleep. 

When I wakened Mr. Harbison was standing by 
the table, and he held my book in his hands. In 
view of the armed neutrality between us, I expected 
to see him bow to me curtly, turn on his heel and 
leave the room. Indeed, considering his state of 
mind the night before, I should hardly have been 
surprised if he had thrown Hedda at my head. 
(This is not a pun. I detest them.) But instead, 
when he heard me move he glanced over at me and 
even smiled a little. 

“She wasn’t worth it,’ he said, indicating the 
book. 

“Worth what?” 

“Your tears. You were crying over it, weren’t 
your” 

“She was very unhappy,” I asserted indifferently. 
“She was married and she loved some one else.” 

“Do you really think she did?” he asked. “And 
even so, was that a reason?” 

316 


mba OW SOAP 


“The other man cared for her; he may not have 
been able to help it.” 

“But he knew that she was married,” he said virtu- 
ously, and then he caught my eye and he saw the 
analogy instantly, for he colored hotly and put down 
the book. 

“Most men argue that way,” I said. “They argue 
by the book, and—they do as they like.” 

He picked up a Japanese ivory paper weight from 
the table, and stood balancing it across his finger. 

“You are perfectly right,’ he said at last. “I de- 
serve it all. My grievance is at myself. Your— 
your beauty, and the fact that I thought you were 
unhappy, put me—beside myself. It is not an ex- 
cuse; it is a weak explanation. I will not forget 
myself again.” 

He was as abject as any one could have wished. 
It was my minute of triumph, but I can not pretend 
that I was happy. Evidently it had been only a 
passing impulse. If he had really cared, now that 


he knew I was free, he would have forgotten him- 
317 


| 
) 


i 
Hy 


= SSS 










A 


rt itt) | 


»&» 


LA 


DAL WAS LYING ON THE STAIRS IN A BATH-ROBE SOUND AS! SEP 






i 
J 
| 
) 


m& BAK OF SOAP 


self again at once. Then a new explanation occurred 
to me. Suppose it had been Bella all the time, and 
the real shock had been to find that she had been 
married! | 

“The fault of the situation was really mine.” 
I said magnanimously; “I quite blame myself. 
Only, you must believe one thing. You never fur- 
nished us any amusement.” I looked at him side- 
wise. ‘The discovery that Bella and Jim were once 
married must have been a great shock. 

“Tt was a surprise,’ he replied evenly. His voice 
and his eyes were inscrutable. He returned my 
glance steadily. It was infuriating to have gone 
half-way to meet him, as I had, and then to find him 
intrenched in his self-sufficiency again. I got up. 

“Tt is unfortunate that our acquaintance has be- 
gun so unfavorably,” I remarked, preparing to pass 
him. “Under other circumstances we might have 
been friends.” 

“There is only one solace,” he said. ‘When we 
do not have friends, we can not lose them.” 


He opened the door to let me pass out, and as our 
319 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


eyes met, all the coldness died out of his. He held 
out his hand, but I was hurt. I refused to see it. 

“Kit!” he said unsteadily. ‘“I—lI’m an obstinate, 
pig-headed brute. Iam sorry. Can’t we be friends, 
after all?” 

‘“““When we do not have friends we can not lose 
them,’ ” I replied with cool malice. And the next in- 
stant the door closed behind me. 

It was that night that the really serious event of 
the quarantine occurred. \ 

We were gathered in the library, and everybody 
was deadly dull. Aunt Selina said she had been 
reared to a strict observance of the Sabbath, and 
she refused to go to bed early. The cards and card- 
tables were put away and every one sat around and 
quarreled and was generally nasty, except Bella and 
Jim, who had gone into the den just after dinner 
and firmly closed the door. 

I think it was just after Max proposed to me. 
Yes, he proposed to me again that night. He said 
that Jim’s illness had decided him; that any of us 
might take sick and die, shut in that contaminated 

320 


A BAR: OF: SOAP 


atmosphere, and that if he did he wanted it all set- 
tled. And whether I took him or not he wanted 
me to remember him kindly if anything happened. 
I really hated to refuse him—he was in such deadly 
earnest. But it was quite unnecessary for him to 
have blamed his refusal, as he did, on Mr. Harbi- 
son. I am sure I had refused him plenty of times 
before I had ever heard of the man. Yes, it was 
just after he proposed to me that Flannigan came to 
the door and called Mr. Harbison out into the hall. 

Flannigan—like most of the people in the house— 
always went to Mr. Harbison when there was any- 
thing to be done. He openly adored him, and— 
what was more—he did what Mr, Harbison ordered 
without a word, while the rest of us had to get 
down on our knees and beg. 

Mr. Harbison went out, muttering something 
about a storm coming up, and seeing that the tent 
was secure. Betty Mercer went with him. She 
had been at his heels all evening, and called him 
“Tom” on every possible occasion. Indeed, she 
made no secret of it: she said that she was mad about 


321 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


him, and that she would love to live in South Amer- 
ica, and have an Indian squaw for a lady’s-maid, and 
sit out on the veranda in the evenings and watch the 
Southern Cross shooting across the sky, and eat 
tropical food from the quaint Indian pottery. She 
was not even daunted when Dal told her the South- 
ern Cross did not shoot, and that the food was prob- 
ably canned corn on tin dishes. 

So Betty went with him. She wore a pale yellow 
dinner gown, with just a sophisticated touch of 
_ black here and there, and cut modestly square in the 
neck. Her shoulders are scrawny. And after they 
were gone—not her shoulders; Mr. Harbison and 
she—Aunt Selina announced that the next day was 
Monday, that she had only a week’s supply of cloth-. 
ing with her, and that no policeman who ever swung 
a mace should wash her undergarments for her. 

She paused a moment, but nobody offered to do it. 
Anne was reading De Maupassant under cover of a 
table, and the rest pretended not to hear. After a 
pause, Aunt Selina got up heavily and went up- . 
stairs, coming down soon after with a bundle coy- 


322 


A BAR OF SOAP 


ered with a green shawl, and with a white balbriggan 
stocking trailing from an opening in it. She paused 
at the library door, surveyed the inmates, caught my 
unlucky eye and beckoned to me with a relentless 
forefinger. 

“We can put them to soak to-night,’”’ she confided 
to me, “and to-morrow they will be quite simple to 
do. There is no lace to speak of’’—Dal raised his 
eyebrows—“and very little flouncing.”’ 

Aunt Selina and I went to the laundry. It never 
occurred to any one that Bella should have gone: 
she had stepped into all my privileges—such as they 
were—and assumed none of my obligations. Aunt 
Selina and J went to the laundry. | 

It is strange what big things develop from little 
ones. In this case it was a bar of soap. And if 
Flannigan had used as much soap as he should have 
instead of washing up the kitchen floor with cold 
dish water, it would have developed sooner. The 
two most unexpected events of the whole quarantine 
occurred that night at the same time, one on the roof 
and one in the cellar. The cellar one, although | 


323 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


curious, was not so serious as the other, so it comes 
first. 

Aunt Selina put her clothes in a tub in the laun- 
dry and proceeded to dress them like a vegetable. 
She threw in a handful of salt, some kerosene oil 
and a little ammonia. The result was villainous, 
but after she tasted it—or snuffed it—she said it 
needed a bar of soap cut up to give it strength—or 
flavor—and I went into the store-room for it. 

The laundry soap was in a box. I took ina silver 
fork, for I hated to touch the stuff, and jabbed a 
bar successfully in the semi-darkness. Then I car- 
ried it back to the laundry and dropped it on the 
table. Aunt Selina looked at the fork with disgust: 
then we both looked at the soap. One side of it was 
covered with round holes thas curved around on 
each other like a coiled snake. 

I ran back to the store-room, and there, a little bit 
sticky and smelling terribly of rosin, lay Anne’s 
pearl necklace! 

I was so excited that I seized Aunt Selina by the 
hands and danced her all over the place. Then I left 


324 


moc bAh ORs SOAP 


her, trying to find her hair-pins on the floor, and ran 
up to tell the others. I met Betty in the hall, and 
waved the pearls at her. But she did not notice 
them. 

“Is Mr. Harbison down there?” she asked breath- 
lessly. “TI left him on the roof and went down to 
my room for my scarf, and when I went back he 
had disappeared. He—he doesn’t seem to be in the 
house.” She tried to laugh, but her voice was shaky. 
“He couldn’t have got down without passing me, 
anyhow,” she supplemented. “I suppose I’m silly, 
but so many queer things have happened, Kit.” 

“T wouldn’t worry, Betty,” I soothed her. “He 
is big enough to take care of himself. And with 
the best intentions in the world, you can’t have him 
all the time, you know.” 

She was too much startled to be indignant. She 
followed me into the library, where the sight of the 
pearls produced a tremendous excitement, and then 
every one had to go down to the store-room, and 
see where the necklace had been hidden, and Max 


examined all the bars of soap for thumb prints. 
325 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


Mr. Harbison did not appear. Max commented 
on the fact caustically, but Dal hushed him up. And 
so, Anne hugging her pearls, and Aunt Selina hav- 
ing put a final seasoning of washing powder on the 
clothes in the tub, we all went up-stairs to bed. It 
had been a long day, and the morning would at 
least bring bridge. : 

-I was almost ready for bed when Jim tapped at 
my door. I had been very cool to him since the 
night in the library when I was publicly staked and 
martyred, and he was almost cringing when I 
opened the door. 

“What is it now?’ I asked cruelly. “Has Bella 
tired of it already, or has somebody else a rash?” 

“Don’t be a shrew, Kit,”’ he said. “I don’t want 
you to do anything. I only—when did you see Har- 
bison last ?”” 

“Tf, you mean ‘last,’” I retorted, “I’m afraid I 
haven’t seen the last of him yet.” Then I saw that 
he was really worried. “Betty was leading him to 
the roof,” I added. “Why? Is he missing ?” 

“He isn’t anywhere in the house. Dal and I have 


326 


A BAR OF SOAP 


been over every inch of it.” Max had-come up, in 
a dressing-gown, and was watching me insolently. 

“TI think we have seen the last of him,” he said. 
“T’m sorry, Kit, to nip the little romance in the bud. 
The fellow was crazy about you—there’s no doubt 
of it. But I’ve been watching him from the begin- 
ning, and I think I’m upheld. Whether he went 
down the water-spout, or across a board to the next 
house—” 

“T—I dislike him intensely,” I said angrily, “but 
you would not dare to say that to his face. He 
could strangle you with one hand.” 

Max laughed disagreeably. 

“Well, I only hope he is gone,” he threw at me 
over his shoulder, “I wouldn’t want to be respon- 
sible to your father if he had stayed.”’ I was speech- 
less with wrath. | 

They went away then, and I could hear them go- 
ing over the house. At one o’clock Jim went up to 
bed, the last, and Mr. Harbison had not been found. 
I did not see how they could go to bed at all. If 
he had escaped, then Max was right and the whole 


327 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


thing was heart-breaking. And if he had not, then 
he might be lying— 

I got up and dressed. 

The early part of the night had been cloudy, but 
when I got to the roof it was clear starlight. The 
wind blew through the electric wires strung across 
and set them singing. The occasional bleat of a 
belated automobile on the drive below came up to 
me raucously. The tent gleamed, a starlit ghost of 
itself, and the boxwoods bent in the breeze. I went 
over to the parapet and leaned my elbows on it. I 
had done the same thing so often before; I had car- 
ried all my times of stress so infallibly to that par- 
ticular place, that instinctively my feet turned there. 

And there in the starlight, I went over the whole 
serio-comedy, and I loathed my part in it. He had 
been perfectly right to be angry with me and with 
allof us. And I had been a hypocrite and a Pharisee, 
and had thanked God that I was not as other people, 
when the fact was that I was worse than the worst. 
And although it wasn’t dignified to think of him 
going down the drain pipe, still—no one could blame 


328 


A BAR OF SOAP 


hitin for wanting to get away from us, and he was 
quite muscular enough to do it. 

I was in the depths of self-abasement when I 
heard a sound behind me. It was a long breath, 
quite audible, that ended in a groan. I gripped the 
parapet and listened, while my heart pounded, and 
in a minute it came again. 

I was terribly frightened. Then—I don’t know 
how I did it, but I was across the roof, kneeling be- 
side the tent, where it stood against the chimney. 
And there, lying prone among the flower-pots, and 
almost entirely hidden, lay the man we had been 
looking for. 

His head was toward me, and [ reached out shak- 
ingly and touched his face. It was cold, and my 
hand, when I drew it back, was covered with blood. 


329 


CHAPTER XXII 


Te IT WAS DELIRIUM 





= 1 WAS sure he was dead. He did 
\\\ \ \\ \\ not move, and when I caught his 
: hands and called him frantically, 
he did not hear me. And so, with 
y. the horror over me, I half fell 
down the stairs and roused Jim 
7 in the studio. 
4 They all came with lights and blankets, 
and they carried him into the tent and put him on 
the couch and tried to put whisky in his mouth. But 
he could not swallow. And the silence became more 
and more ominous until finally Anne got hysterical 
and cried, “He is dead! dead!” and collapsed on the 
roof. 

But he was not. Just as the lights in the tent 
began to have red rings around them and Jim’s 


Be 


IT WAS DELIRIUM 


voice came from away across the river, somebody, 
said, “There, he swallowed that,” and soon after, 
he opened his eyes. He muttered something that 
sounded like ““Andean pinnacle” and lapsed into un- 
consciousness again. But he was not dead! He was 
not dead! | 

| (When the doctor came they made a stretcher out 
of one of Jim’s six-foot canvases—it had a picture 
on it, and Jim was angry enough the next day—and 
took him down to the studio. We made it as much 
like a sick-room as we could, and we tried to make 
him comfortable. But he lay without opening his 
eyes, and at dawn the doctor brought a consultant 
and a trained nurse. 

The nurse was an offensively capable person. She 
put us all out, and scolded Anne for lighting Japa-\ 
nese incense in the room—although Anne explained 
that it is very reviving. And she said that it was 
unnecessary to have a dozen people breathing up all 
the oxygen and asphyxiating the patient. She was 
good looking, too. I disliked her at once. Any one 
could see by the way she took his pulse—just let- 


33! 





I DON’T KNOW WHY MOTHER DIDN'T LET ME STUDY NURSING 


IT WAS DELIRIUM 


ting his poor hand hang, without any support—that 
she was a purely mechanical creature, without heart. 

Well, as I said before, she put us all out, and 
shut the door, and asked us not to whisper outside. 
Then, too, she refused to allow any flowers in the 
room, although Betty had got a florist out of bed to 
order some. | 

The consultant came, stayed an hour, and left. 
Aunt Selina, who proved herself a trump in that 
trying time, waylaid him in the hall, and he said it 
might be a fractured skull, although it was possibly 
only concussion. 

The men spent most of the morning together in 
the den, with the door shut. Now and then one of 
them would tiptoe up-stairs, ask the nurse how her 
patient was doing, and creak down again. Just be- 
fore noon they all went to the roof and examined 
again the place where he had been found. I know, 
for I was in the upper hall, outside the studio. I 
stayed there almost all day, and after a while the 
nurse let me bring her things as she needed them. 
I don’t know why mother didn’t let me study 


Gao 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


nursing—lI always wanted to doit. And I felt help- 
less and childish now, when there were things to be 
done. 

Max came down from the roof alone, and I cor- : 
. nered him in the upper hall. 

“T’m going crazy, Max,” I said. “Nobody will 
tell me anything, and I can’t stand it. How was 
he hurt? Who hurt him?” 

Max looked at me quite a long time. 

“T’m darned if I understand you, Kit,” he said 
gravely. “You said you disliked Harbison.” 

“So I do—I did,” I supplemented. “But whether 
I like him or not has nothing to do with it. He has 
been injured—perhaps murdered”—I choked a little. 
“Which—which of you did it?” 

Max took my hand and held it, looking down at 
me. 

“I wish you could have cared for me like that,” 
he said gently. ‘Dear little girl, we don’t know who 
hurt him. J didn’t, if that’s what you mean. Per-’ 
haps a flower-pot—” 

I began to cry then, and he drew me to him and 


334 


IT WAS DELIRIUM 


let me cry on his arm. He stood very quietly, pat- 
ting my head in a brotherly way and behaving very 
well, save that once he said: 

“Don’t cry too long, Kit; I can stand only a cer- 
tain amount.” 

And just then the nurse opened the door to the 
studio, and with Max’s arms still around me, I 
raised my head and looked in. 

Mr. Harbison was conscious. His eyes were 
open, and he was staring at us both as we stood 
framed by the doorway. 

He lay back at once and closed his eyes, and the 
nurse shut the door. There was no use, even if I had 
been allowed in, in trying to explain to him. To at- 
tempt such a thing would have been to presume that 
he was interested in an explanation. I thought bit- 
terly to myself as I brought the nurse cracked ice and 
struggled to make beef tea in the kitchen, that lives 
had been wrecked on less. 

Dal was allowed ten minutes in the sick-room 
during the afternoon, and he came out looking puz- 
zled and excited. He refused to tell us what he 


r 


335 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


had learned, however, and the rest of the afternoon 
he and Jim spent in the cellar. 

The day dragged on. Down-stairs people ate and 
read and wrote letters, and outside newspaper men 
talked together and gazed over at the house and 
photographed the doctors coming in and the doctors 
going out. As for me, in the intervals of bringing 
things, I sat in Bella’s chair in the upper hall, and 
listened to the crackle of the nurse’s starched skirts. 

At midnight that night the doctors made a thor- 
ough examination. When they came out they were 
smiling. 

“He is doing very well,” the younger one said— 
he was hairy and dark, but he was beautiful to me. 
“He is entirely conscious now, and in about an hour 
you can send the nurse off for a little sleep. Don’t 
let him talk.” 

And so at last I went through the familiar door 
into an unfamiliar room, with basins and towels and 
bottles around, and a screen made of Jim’s largest 
canvases. And some one on the improvised bed 
turned and looked at me. He did not speak, and 


336 





IT WAS DELIRIUM 


T sat down beside him. After a while he put his 
hand over mine as it lay on the bed. 

“You are much better to me than I deserve,”’ he 
said softly. And because his eyes were disconcert- 
ing, I put an ice cloth over them. 

“Much better than you deserve,’ I said, and 
patted the ice cloth to place gently. He fumbled 
around until he found my hand again, and we were 
quiet for a long time. I think he dozed, for he 
roused suddenly and pulled the cloth from his eyes. 

“The—the day is all confused,” he said, turning 
to look at me, “but—one thing seems to stand out 
from everything else. Perhaps it was delirium, but 
I seemed to see that door over there open, and you, 
outside, with—with Max. His arms were around 
you.” 

“Tt was delirium,” I said softly. It was my final 
lie in that house of mendacity. 

He drew a satisfied breath, and lifting my hand, 
held it to his lips’and kissed it. 

“T can hardly believe it is you,’ he said. “I have 


to hold firmly to your hand or you will disappear. 
Sas 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


Can’t you move your chair closer? You are miles 
away.” So I did it, for he was not to be excited. 

After a little— 

“Tt’s awfully good of you to do this. I have been 
desperately sorry, Kit, about the other night. It 
was a ruffianly thing to do—to kiss you, when I 
thought—” 

“You are to keep very still,’ I reminded him. 
He kissed my hand again, but he persisted. 

“I was mad—crazy.” I tried to give him some 
medicine, but he pushed the spoon aside. “You will 
have to listen,” he said. ‘I am in the depths of self- 
disgust. I—I can’t think of anything else. You 
see, you seemed so convinced that I was the black- 
guard that somehow nothing seemed to matter.” 

“T have forgotten it all,” I declared generously, 
“and I would be quite willing to be friends, only, 
you remember you said—” 

“Friends !’ his voice was suddenly reckless, and 
he raised on his elbow. “Friends! Who wants to 
be friends? Kit, I was almost delirious that night. 


The instant I held you in my arms it was all over. 


338 


IT WAS DELIRIUM 


I loved you the first time I saw you. I—TI suppose | 
I’m a fool to talk like this.” | 

And, of course, just then Dallas had to open the 
door and step into the room. He was covered with 
dirt and he had a hatchet in his hand. 

“A rope!’ he demanded, without paying any at- 
tention to us and diving into corners of the room. 
“Good heavens, isn’t there a rope in this confounded 
house!’ 

He turned and rushed out, without any explana- 
tion, and left us staring at the door. 

“Bother the rope!” JI found myself forced to 
look into two earnest eyes. “Kit, were you very 
angry when I kissed you that night on the roof?” 

“Very,” I maintained stoutly. 

“Then prepare yourself for another attack of 
rage!’’ he said. And Betty opened the door. 

She had on a fetching pale blue dressing-gown, 
and one braid of her yellow hair was pulled care- 
lessly over her shoulder. When she saw me on my 
knees beside the bed (oh, yes, I forgot to say that, 


quite unconsciously, I had slid into that position) 
339 | 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


she stopped short, just inside the door, and put her 
hand to her throat. She stood for quite a perceptible 
time looking at us, and I tried to rise. But Tom 
shamelessly put his arm around my shoulders and 
held me beside him. Then Betty took a step back 
and steadied herself by the door-frame. She had 
really cared, I knew then, but I was too excited to 
be sorry for her. 

“J—I beg your pardon for coming in,” she said 
nervously. “But—they want you down-stairs, Kit. 
At least, I thought you would want to go, but— 
perhaps—’” 

Just then from the lower part of the house came 
a pandemonium of noises: women screaming, men 
shouting, and the sound of hatchet strokes and splin- 
tering wood. I seized Betty by the arm, and to- 
gether we rushed down the stairs, 


340 


CHAPTER XXIII 


COMING 







THE second floor was empty. A 
table lay overturned at the top 
\. of the stairs, and a broken 
~ flower vase was weltering in 
s its own ooze. Part way down 
= Betty stepped on something 
sharp, that proved to be the 
Japanese paper knife from the 
a I left her on the stairs ex- 
amining her foot, and hurried to the lower floor. 
Here everything was in the utmost confusion. 
Aunt Selina had fainted, and was sitting in a hall 
chair with her head rolled over sidewise and the 
poker from the library fireplace across her knees. 
No one was paying any attention to her. And Jim 


was holding the front door open, while three of the 
341 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


guards hesitated in the vestibule. The noises con- 
tinued from the back of the house, and as I stood on 
the lowest stair Bella came out from the dining- 
room, with her face streaked with soot, and ane 
a kettle of hot water. 

she called wildly. “While Max and Dal 


are below, you can pour this down from the top. 


b 


ad be cs 


It’s boiling.” 

Jim glanced back over his shoulder. ‘Carry out 
your own murderous designs,” he said. And then, 
as she started back with it, “Bella, for Heaven’s 
sake,” he called, “have you gone stark mad? Put 
that kettle down.” 

She did it sulkily and Jim turned to the sane 
man. 

““Yes, I know it was a false alarm before,” he ex- 
plained patiently, “but this is genuine. It is just as 
I tell you. Yes, Flannigan is in the house some- 
where, but he’s hiding, I guess. We could manage 
_ the thing very well ourselves, but we have no cart- 
ridges for our revolvers.” Then as the noise from 


the rear redoubled, “If you don’t come in and help, 
342 


COMING 


I will telephone for the fire department,” he con- 
cluded emphatically. 

I ran to Aunt Selina and tried to straighten her 
head. In a moment she opened her eyes, sat up 
and stared around her. She saw the kettle at 
once. | 

“What are you doing with boiling water on the 
floor?’ she said to me, with her returning voice. 
“Don’t you know you will spoil: the floor?” The 
ruling passion was strong with Aunt Selina, as 
usual. 

I could not find out the trouble from any one: 
people appeared and disappeared, carrying strange 
articles. Anne with a rope, Dal with his hatchet, 
Bella and the kettle, but I could get a coherent ex- 
planation from no one. When the guards finally 
decided that Jim was in earnest, and that the rest of 
us were not crawling out a rear window while he 
held them at the door, they came in, three of them 
and two reporters, and Jim led them to the butler’s 
pantry. 

Here we found Anne, very white and shaky, with 

343 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


the pantry table and two chairs piled against the 
door of the kitchen slide, and clutching the chamois- 
skin bag that held her jewels. She had a bottle of 
Burgundy open beside her, and was pouring her- 
self a glass with shaking hands when we appeared. 
She was furious at Jim. 

“T very nearly fainted,” she said hysterically. “T 
might have been murdered, and no one would have 
cared. I wish they would stop that chopping, ’m 
so nervous I could scream.”’ 

Jim took the Burgundy from her with one hand 
and pointed the police to the barricaded door with 
the other. 

“That is the door to the dumb-waiter shaft,” he 
said. ‘The lower one is fastened on the inside, in 
some manner. The noises commenced about eleven 
o'clock, while Mr. Brown was on guard. There 
were scraping sounds first, and later the sound of a 
falling body. He roused Mr. Reed and myself, but 
when we examined the shaft everything was quiet, 
and dark. We tried lowering a candle on a string, 


but—it was extinguished from below.” 


344 


COMING 


The reporters were busily removing the table and 
chairs from the door. 

“If you have a rope handy,” one of them said, “I 
will go down the shaft.” 

(Dal says that all reporters should have been po- 
licemen, and that all policemen are natural news 
gatherers. ) , 

“The cage appears to be stuck, half-way between 
the floors,” Jim said. “They are cutting through 
the door in the kitchen below.” 

They opened the door then and cautiously peered 
down, but there was nothing to be seen. I touched 
Jim gingerly on the arm. 

“Ts it—is it Flannigan,” I asked, “shut in there?” 

“No—yes—I don’t know,” he returned absently. 
“Run along and don’t bother, Kit. He may take to 
shooting any minute.” 

Anne and I went out then and shut the door, and 
went into the dining-room and sat on our feet, for 
of course the bullets might come up through the 
floor. Aunt Selina joined us there, and Bella, and 
the Mercer girls, and we sat around and talked in 


345 






Wr 


\ 
Ea 


‘ 


AN 


\ 





*GoopD LoRD! ON THE STAIRS TO THE ROOF! you!” 







COMING 


whispers, and Leila Mercer told of the time her 
grandfather had had a struggle with an escaped lu- 
natic. 

In the midst of the excitement Tom appeared in a 
bath-robe, looking very pale, with a bandage around 
his head, and the nurse at his heels threatening to 
leave and carrying a bottle of medicine and a spoon. 
He went immediately to the pantry, and soon we . 
could hear him giving orders and the rest hurrying 
around to obey them. The hammering ceased, and 
the silence was even worse. It was more suggestive. 

In about fifteen minutes there was a thud, as if 
the cage had fallen, and the sound of feet rushing 
down the cellar stairs. Then there were groans and 
loud oaths, and everybody talking at once, below, 
and the sound of a struggle. In the dining-room we 
all sat bent forward, with straining ears and quick- 
ened breath, until we distinctly heard some one 
laugh. Then we knew that, whatever it was, it was 
over, and nobody was killed. 

The sounds came closer, were coming up the 


stairs and into the pantry. Then the door swung 


347 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


open, and Tom and a policeman appeared in the 
doorway, with the others crowding behind. Be- 
tween them they supported a grimy, unshaven ob- 
ject, covered with whitewash from the wall of the 
shaft, an object that had its hands fastened together 
with handcuffs, and that leered at us with a pair of 
the most villainously crossed eyes J have ever seen. 

None of us had ever seen him before. 

“Mr. Lawrence McGuirk, better known as 
‘Tubby,’ Tom said cheerfully. “A celebrity in his 
particular line, which is second-story man and all- 
round rascal. A victim of the quarantine, like 
ourselves.” 

“We've missed him for a week,’ one of- the 
guards said with a grin. “We’ve been real anxious 
about you, Tubby. Ain’t a week goes by, when 
you're in health, that we don’t hear something of 
you.” 

Mr. McGuirk muttered something under his 
breath, and the men chuckled. 

“It seems,” Tom said, interpreting, “that he 
doesn’t like us much. He doesn’t like the food, and 


348 


COMING 


he doesn’t like the beds. He says just when he got 
a good place fixed up in the coal cellar, Flannigan 
found it, and is asleep there now, this minute.” 

Aunt Selina rose suddenly and cleared her throat. 

“Am I to understand,” she asked severely, “that 
from now on we will have to add two newspaper 
reporters, three policemen and a burglar to the oc- 
cupants of this quarantined house? Because, if that 
is the case, I absolutely refuse to feed them.” 

But one of the reporters stepped forward and 
bowed ceremoniously. 

“Madam,” he said, “I thank you for your kind 
invitation, but—it will be impossible for us to ac- 
cept. I had intended to break the good news earlier, 
but this little game of burglar-in-a-corner prevented 
me. ‘The fact is, your Jap has been discovered to 
have nothing more serious than chicken-pox, and— 
if you will forgive a poultry yard joke, there is no 
longer any necessity for your being cooped up.” 

Then he retired, quite pleased with himself. 

One would have thought we had exhausted our 
capacity for emotion, but Jim said a joyful emotion 


349 


WHEN A MAN MARRIES 


was so new that we hardly knew how to receive it. 
Every one shook hands with every one else, and 
even the nurse shared in the excitement and gave 
Jim the medicine she had prepared for Tom. 

Then we all sat down and had some champagne, . 
and while they were waiting for the police wagon, 
they gave some to poor McGuirk. He was still 

quite shaken from his experience when the dumb- 
) waiter stuck. The wine cheered him a little, and he 
told his story, in a voice that was creaky from dis- 
use, while Tom held my hand under the table. 

He had had a dreadful week, he said; he spent his . — 
days in a closet in one of the maids’ rooms—the one 
where we had put Jim. It was Jim waking out of © 
a nap and declaring that the closet door had moved — 
by itself and that something had crawled under his 
bed and out of the door, that had roused the sus- 
picions of the men in the house—and he slept at 
night on the coal in the cellar. He was actually tear- 
ful when he rubbed his hand over his scrubby chin, 
and said he hadn’t had a shave for a week. He took 
somebody’s razor, he said, but he couldn’t get hold 
of a portable mirror, and every time he lathered up 


350 


COMING 


and stood in front of the glass in the dining-room 
sideboard, some one came and he had had to run and 
hide. He told, too, of his attempts to escape, of the 
board on the roof, of the home-made rope and the 
hole in the cellar, and he spoke feelingly of the pearl 
collar and the struggle he had made to hide it. He 
said that for three days it was concealed in the pocket 
of Jim’s old smoking coat in the studio. 

We were all rather sorry for him, but if we had 
made him uncomfortable, think of what he had done 
tous. And for him to tell, as he did later in court, 
that if that was high society he would rather be a 
burglar, and that we starved him, and that the 
women had to dress each other because they had no 
lady’s-maids, and that the whole lot of us were in 
love with one man, it was downright malicious. 

The wagon came for him just as he finished his 
story, and we all went to the door. In the vestibule ° 
Aunt Selina suddenly remembered something, and 
she stepped forward and caught the poor fellow by 
the arm. | 

“Young man,” she said grimly. “T’ll thank you to 


return what you took from me last Tuesday night.” 
B51 





COMING 


~ McGuirk stared, then shuddered and turned sud- 
denly pale. 

“Good Lord!’ he ejaculated. “On the stairs to 
the roof! You!” 

They led him away then, quite broken, with Aunt 
Selina staring after him. She never did understand. 
I could have explained, but it was too awful. 

On the steps McGuirk turned and took a farewell 
glance at us. Then he waved his hand to the police- 
men and reporters who had gathered around. 

“Good-by, fellows,’ he called feebly. “I ain’t 
sorry, I ain't. Jail’ll be a paradise after this.” 


And then we went to pack our trunks. 


Note from Max which came the next day with its 
enclosure. 


My Dear Kit—tThe enclosed trunk tag was used 
on my trunk, evidently by mistake. Higgins discov- 
ered it when he was unpacking and returned it to me 
under the misapprehension that I had written it. I 
wish I had. I suppose there must be something at- 
tractive about a fellow who has the courage to write 


a love letter on the back of a trunk tag, and who 


Ono 


WEEN A MAN MARRIES 


doesn’t give a tinker’s damn who finds it. But for 

my peace of mind, ask him not to leave another one 

around where I will come across it. Max. 
Written on the back of the trunk tag. 


Don’t you know that I won’t see you until to-mor- 
row? For Heaven’s sake, get away from this crowd 
and come into the den. If you don’t I will kiss you 
before everybody. Are you coming? T. 


Written below. 
No indeed. K. 


This was scratched out and beneath. 


Coming. 











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an all-conquering hero and a beautiful princess figure in a most complicated 
plot. One of Mr. McCutcheon’s best books. 

TOLD BY UNCLE REMUS. By Joel Chandler Harris. Illus- 
trated by A. B. Frost, J. M. Conde and Frank Verbeck. 

Again Uncle Remus enters the fields of childhood, and leads another 
little boy to that non-locatable land called “ Brer Rabbit’s Laughing 
Place,” and again the quaint animals spring into active life and play their 
parts, for the edification of a small but appreciative audience, 


THE CLIMBER. By E. F. Benson. With frontispiece. 

An uns pee analysis of an ambitious woman’s soul—a woman who 
believed that in social supremacy she would find happiness, and who finds 
instead the utter despair of one who has chosen the things that pass away. 
LYNCH’S DAUGHTER. By Leonard Merrick. Illustrated by 

Geo. Brehm. 
_A story of to-day, telling how a rich girl acquires ideals of beautiful and 
simple living, and of men and love, quite apart from the teachings of her 
father, “ Old Man Lynch "of" Wall St. True to life, clever in treatment. 


Grosser & Duntap, 526 Wesr 26th Str., New York 














A FEW OF 9) 
GROSSET & DUNLAP’S 
Great Books at Little Prices 


THE MUSIC MASTER. By Charles Klein. Illustrated 
by John Rae. 

This marvelously vivid narrative turns upon the search of a Ger- 
man musician in New York for his little daughter. Mr. Kiein has 
well portrayed his pathetic struggle with poverty, his varied expe- 
riences in endeavoring to meet the demands of a public not trained 
to anappreciation of the classic, and his final great hour when, in 
the rapidly shifting events of a big city, his little daughter, nowa 
beautifnl young woman, is brought to his very door. A superb bit 
of fiction, palpitating with the life of the great metropolis. The 
play in which David Warfield scored his highest success, 


DR. LAVENDAR’S PEOPLE. By Margaret Deland. 
Illustrated by Lucius Hitchcock. 

Mrs. Deland won so many friends through Old Chester Tales 
that this volume needs no introduction beyond its title. The lova- 
ble doctor is more ripened in this later book, and the simple come- 
dies and tragedies of the old village are told with dramatic charm. 


OLD CHESTER TALES. By Margaret Deland. Illustrated 

by Howard Pyle. 

Stories portrsyik with delightful humor and pathos a quaint peo- 
plein asleepy old town. Dr. Lavendar, a very human and iovable 
7 Sai oie St is the connecting link between these dramatic stories 

rom life, 


HE FELLIN LOVE WITH HIS WIFE. By E. P. Roe. 
With frontispiece. 

The hero is a farmer—a man with honest, sincere views of life. 
Bereft of his wife, his home is cared for by a succession of domes- 
tics of varying degrees of inefficiency until, from a most unpromis- 
ing source, comes a young woman who not only becomes his wife 
but commands his respect and eventually wins hislove. A bright 
and delicate romance, revealing on both sides a love that surmounts 
all difficulties and survives the censure of friends as well as the bit- 
terness of enemies, 


THE YOKE, By Elizabeth Miller, 

Against the historical background of the days when the children 
of Israel were delivered from the bondage of Egypt, the author has 
sketched a romance of compelling charm. A biblical novel as great 
as any since “Ben Hur.” _ 

SAUL OF TARSUS. By Elizabeth Miller. Illustrated by 
André Castaigne. 

The scenes of this story are laid in Jerusalem, Alexandria, Rome 
and Damascus. ‘Ihe Apostle Paul, the Martyr Stephen, Herod 
Agrippa and the Emperors Tiberius and Caligula are among the 
mighty figures that move through the pages. Wonderfnl descrip- 
tions, and a love story of the purest and noblest type mark this 
most remarkable religious romance, 


Grosser & Duntap, 526 Wesr 26th St., New YorK 


FR 




















A FEW OF 
GROSSET & DUNLAP’S 


Great Books at Little Prices 


CY WHITTAKER’S PLACE. By Joseph C. Lincoln, 
Illustrated by Wallace Morgan. 
A Cape Cod story describing the amusing efforts of an el- 
derly bachelor and his two cronies to rear and educate a little 
girl. Full of honest fun—a rural drama. 


THE FORGE IN THE FOREST. By Charles G. D. 
Roberts. Illustrated by H. Sandham. 

A story of the conflict in Acadia after its conquest by the 
British. A dramatic picture that lives and shines with the in- 
definable charm of poetic romance. 

A SISTER TO EVANGELINE. By Charles G. D. 
Roberts. Illustrated by E. McConnell. 

Being the story of Yvonne de Lamourie, and how she went 
into exile with the villagers of Grand Pré. Swift action, 
fresh atmosphere, wholesome purity, deep passion and search- 
ing analysis characterize this strong novel. 


THE OPENED SHUTTERS. By Clara Louise Burn- 
ham. Frontispiece by Harrison Fisher. 

A summer haunt on an island in Casco Bay is the back- 
Sage for this romance. A beautiful woman, at discord with 
ife, is brought to realize, by her new friends, that she may 
open the shutters of her soul to the blessed sunlight of joy by 
casting aside vanity and selflove. A delicately humorous 
work with a lofty motive underlying it all. 


THE RIGHT PRINCESS. By Clara Louise Burnham. 
_ An amusing story, opening at a fashionable Long Island re- 
sort, where a stately Englishwoman employs a forcible New 
England housekeeper to serve in her interesting home. How 
types so widely apart react on each others’ lives, all to ulti- 
mate good, makes a story both humorous and rich in sentiment. 
THE LEAVEN OF LOVE. By Clara Louise Burn- 
ham, Frontispiece by Harrison Fisher. 

At a Southern California resort a world-weary woman, youn 
and beautiful but disillusioned, meets a girl who has learne 
the art of living—of tasting life in allits richness, opulence and 
joy. The story hinges upon the change wrought in the soul 
of the blasé woman by this glimpse into a cheery life. 





Grosser & Duntap, 526 West 26th St., New York 














TITLES SELECTED FROM 


GROSSET & DUNLAP’S LIST 


REALISTIC, ENGAGING PICTURES OF LIFE. 


THE GARDEN OF FATE. By Roy Norton. Lilustrated 
by Joseph Clement Coll. 
The colorful romance of an American girl in Morocco, and 
of a beautiful garden, whose beauty and traditions of strange 
subtle happenings were closed to the world by a Sultan’s seal. 


THE MAN HIGHER UP. By Henry Russell Miller, 

Full page vignette illustrations by M. Leone Bracker. 

The story of a tenement waif who rose by his own ingenuity 

to the office of mayor of his native city. His experiences 

while “climbing,” make a most interesting example of the 
possibilities of human nature to rise above circumstances. 


THE KEY TO YESTERDAY. By Charles Neville 
Buck. © Illustrated by R. Schabelitz. 

Robert Saxon, a prominent artist, has an accident, while in 
Paris, which obliterates his memory, and the only clue he has 
to his former Jife is a rusty key. What door in Paris will it 
unlock? He must know that before he woos the girl he loves, 


THE DANGER TRAIL. By James Oliver Curwood. 
Illustrated by Charles Livingston Bull, 

The danger trail is over the snow-smothered North. A 
es Chicago engineer, who is building a road through the 

udson Bay region, is involved in mystery, and is led into 
ambush by a young woman. 

THE GAY LORD WARING. By Houghton Townley. 
Illustrated by Will Grefe. 

A story of the smart hunting set in England. A gay youn 
lord wins in love against his selfish and cowardly brother an 
apparently against fate itself. 
BY INHERITANCE. By Octave Thanet. Illustrated 

by Thomas Fogarty. Elaborate wrapper in colors. 

A wealthy New England spinster with the most elaborate 
plans for the education of the negro goes to visit her nephew 
in Arkansas, where she learns the needs of the colored race 
first hand and begins to lose her theories. 


GrosseT & Duntap, 526 West 26th St., NEw York 











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